toss-up votes.it we, you know, thist is a kind , you know, always-changing kind of map that we have.ays we, you know, we use polling, we use reporting on the ground fro. our reporters all over the country to kind of move states in and out from, you know, one category to another. but that's where it stands at the moment. >> host: give us a sense of how this is changed from the eve ofi the second prbl debate. what did this map look like on the eve of the first presidential debate? where have been the biggestthen shifts? >> guest: well, you know, i'm not exactly sure. you know, we don't do this on a set schedule, so i'm not exactly sure when some of these exactly have moved on which day. finish not do this on a set schedule, but there was a time when pennsylvania, we consider that a tossup state. we have moved that to leaning towards obama, because it seems that that state has moved away from it romney.

north carolina, which at one point had been leaning towards mid romney has been moved back into the tossup category. as we move forward, over these last few weeks we will be looking at states like pennsylvania moving further into the obama category. new mexico, should that be moved further into the obama category? the reverse, places like missouri and indiana, which right now can we conclude at this point that these are firmly in the mitt romney column? that is the kind of thing that we look at, every day there are new polls coming out with reporters touching down in these states, those are the kinds of choices we are going to look at. obviously, it looks like that

topic column is getting smaller and smaller and the candidates themselves are spending time in places like florida, ohio, and virginia. as we narrow it down, that is really the real tossup. host: 270 needed to win, your map has 110 tossup states. as you look at them, are there some that are more volatile than others? some that are more likely to move after the debate as opposed to others that seem to be stuck in the tossup category? caller: sure. look at a place like colorado, which has really been razor close four weeks and weeks. we did a poll in colorado last week that i wrote about where it was absolutely a dead heat. not only on the overall number, but the internal questions about

who you trust on the economy, as a leader, on a variety of issues like energy, health care, education, it was all very close. that is the kind of state that has the potential to really be affected by a big event like a debate tonight. if all of a sudden one of the candidates does really well in the debate, or really poorly, colorado is a state where we might find in the next few days you see evidence in polling and the like that maybe that is a state that we have to shift to one direction or the other. host: before i let you go, i want to ask you about some of the different scenarios that your map is allowed to play out. caller: that is one of the best things about our map. some of the other folks do this as well, but a visitor to our

website can have complete control. you can start out with the scenario that we have with the 237 and you can literally grab ohio, for example, and say -- let's take these 18 electoral votes. you can literally just go back and create your own scenario. one of the things that we hope happens out of that is we hope people get a better sense of the way in which this election really plays out. not in the full 50 states, but these handful of eight or nine swing states, that they can kind of get a better grasp of the dynamics of what the campaign strategists are doing, which is to kind of focus on this small

pocket of states and what their path to victory is. host: michael shear of we are alive now on internet privacy looking at congress and the executive branch and considering the government's role in online privacy. this is live coverage just getting under way. >> to reduce unemployment in america. i am very pleased to announce we have a position for research assistance. please contact the human resources department here at the hudson institute if you are interested. to upcoming events one is on november 28th. it will be advice for the next communications commission will be very fortunate to have the to former chairman of the fcc, reed hundt and richard y. lee will give advice after the election.

on december 12th, stephen crocker, the chairman of the board of icon will speak about issues before icon, which is a very sensitive issue and international issues related to the internet. but today we are very fortunate to have with us commissioner ohlhausen of the federal trade commission. the topic today is about getting it right. it's about who should be writing laws and regulating privacy on the internet. commissioner ohlhausen has a very long and distinguished cv. i'm not going to read it all to you. you can find it on the web site at the federal trade commission. i would like to simply say that commissioner ohlhausen has

worked on privacy issues before the federal trade commission since she was probably about 3-years-old i would have to say. it has been the focus of her career. she is the foremost expert on privacy issues before the federal trade commission and her views i think, both a clear understanding of bill laws under which the federal communications operate, as well as a very heavy dose of common sense. it is my great pleasure to welcome commissioner maureen ohlhausen here to the center for the economics of the internet and we are very much looking forward to your comments today. >> thank you so much for that kind introduction and the institute on the important role of the government while in privacy and how to get it right.

as you may know, prior to leaving a private practice to join the commission in april of this year i had previously served at the commission for almost 12 years starting in 97. my experience at the commission and the general counsel's office working for the and as the head of the commission's office of policy planning has provided an extensive background in all the areas of which the ftc operates which is consumer protection from antitrust and economics. this experience by it's how i approach all issues of the commission in including privacy. so it is in this spirit i would like to address privacy in a broader context and the ftc's current statutory authority to protect american consumers against unfair practices. as well as the commission's very important mission to preserve competition in the market. so, i'm going to start with a discussion of the enforcement

record based on the current statutory authority and then i will describe some of their important functions and tools that we have at our disposal such as business and consumer education functions and the critical role that has played in the privacy area especially the online environment. and finally i will highlight a little about how the commission stays on top of the emerging issues such as mobile technology that is currently sweeping the globe. after my opening remarks i would like to spend some time really learning from you. what is the most valuable things i can do as the commissioner is to listen. and when i hear directly from consumers and businesses and policymakers, my ability to do my job is greatly enhanced. so i will pose several questions related to issues with which the agency is currently grappling and i hope he will be willing to share with me your thoughts on how the impact you. since the tournament is fair play i will certainly leave time

for you to ask me questions. so i wanted to start with section 5 of the ftc act which is the heart of the ftc's authority and prohibits unfair deceptive acts and practices in the commerce and that's the consumer protection area. and of competition which is in the antitrust area. on section 5 provides a powerful law enforcement tool that is really proven over time as the mainstay of the ftc's and for such effort. and although elegantly text section five to reach a multitude of factors and has proven to be very flexible over the years. but a number of years ago, the commission adopted separate statements on deception and fairness to explain how we will use it to interpret section 5 in the consumer protection area. there have been questions whether we were using it and expensively and how they saw this very general grant of

authority and where the boundaries were for that. and those statements continue to guide the agency's work today. and here's how they work. the deception statement explains that deceptive practices of representations' whether implicit or explicit about material facts that are likely to mislead consumers acting reasonably. there is a lot packed into that. challenging the section has long been the core of the commission's consumer protection mission. and it should remain so. i particularly want to emphasize fraud. we have privacy as an important topic and we have discussed it a lot, but the core of the commission's consumer protection mission is challenging fraud and it should remain so. fraud is a serious problem that leads to monetary losses for consumers as well as trusten marketplace. and this hurts consumers who lose their money and legitimate businesses alike may have to overcome some of the missing

pieces that have been created or have to compete with companies who were making false promises that would be adhered to. so in the areas of privacy and security, the commission most often uses the deception authority in the cases where the country makes a representation to a consumer about the collection were the use of the person of information, but it fails to keep that promise to the consumer results. so deception is in contrast to the fairness authority which does not require a representation to consumers, but instead focuses on the consumer harm that an act or practice may cause. the commissions on fairness statement requires that for the commission to find the practice, the harmid causes must be substantial. i must not be outweighed by any offsetting consumer benefit coming into the consumer could not have reasonably avoided the harm. - it to a it further identifies

the health and safety harm as a variety of harm that the commission could consider substantial. it also states the emotional impact in the course of just a part of arms are not intended to make it an affair. so to illustrate how the deception on the fairness authority works in the areas of privacy. just two weeks ago we announced a settlement designer wear and the right to own companies that deployed the product to consumers so they would go in and rent it from a company. and so did have legitimate features such as a kill switch at the right to own store could use to disable a computer if it were stolen or if they failed to make payments on it. the designer product often had a

detective mode that was intended to help the rent to own operators track the location of the computers, and again if there was colin one of the payment was no longer being made on them. but the way that the designer wear is in detective mode installed and the way it was operated by designer wear in the rent to own stores as well provided notices of certain features which is in the privacy issue. so the detective mode is activated the software quality keystrokes, catch your keen deacons screen shot and took photographs using the web cam and it presented a fake software registration screen that tricked consumers and to providing personal contact information and wasn't used to register software. in the data gathered provided they're meant to own stores using the detective motive in private and confidential detail about computer users such as their user names and passwords,

e-mail accounts and financial and institutional accounts, their social security numbers, medical records, private e-mails to doctors and banks, credit card statements, children in the home and partially understand the duals and internet activity at home as well as if they move the laptop and around the precise jeal location data. so the ftc complaint against the rent to own companies included the deception accounts. the deception was very straightforward and was based on the consumer's st deacons av registration to obtain information to this was an explicit representation about a material fact the was misleading. that is what is under the deception standard. but the commission also charged that licensing and enabling detective mode gathering this sensitive personal and information about the renters and disclosing the information

to the right to own businesses was on a fair. so specifically, the collection and the disclosure of the private and confidential and medical information about the consumers caused or is likely to cause substantial injury to consumers and i believe this is consistent with the on fairness statement which clearly identifies financial. the complaint also alleged that the defendant's intrusion into the consumer's home to track the locations overtime and capture and disclosure information and putting images on the individual said such collectivities is also unfair and the intrusion into the home and sharing of such images along with the tracking of precise consumer location over time in my opinion caused injury to consumers by creating unwarranted safety risks that could arise in a similar behavior triggered by such exposure and tracking. as for the other requirements of transparency which i mentioned as a three park test, the cost

detective mode functioned secretly consumers were never informed of this was going to happen. they were never told when they bring to the computer by the way, it has this capability that was never part of any part of disclosure to the consumer. consumers couldn't really reasonably avoid this harm and any possible benefit to the practice such as being able to find a missing computer was really outweighed by its harm. particularly the cost to the right to own stores had alternative methods for finding and retrieving those computers. and i would note that as a general rule, i do not support holding the third parties who create a product like software liable for actions that others take using the product. in this case, however, the determinative factor for me is not just holding their rent to own stores who directly interface with consumers, not just holding them liable but also the software designer liable was that the designer wear knowingly collected the sensitive medical and financial

data and images from consumers and also generated the sake of the registration form that is sent to consumers. and that rightly puts them on the hook. so why didn't i believe this case? it isn't simply to highlight the computer, but to emphasize the commission was able to stop this behavior under section 5 and no additional authority is necessary and this case is not an exception so with of the current statutory authority the ftc has brought more than 100 us thierer cases and more than 40 of the data security cases including against many companies as well as 19 children online privacy protection act cases. there has, however, and calls for additional legislation. and in the ftc's private consumer report which was released shortly before i joined the commission, some of my fellow commissioners called for a new privacy law that would go beyond section 5.

but they did not specify what section of legislation should look like. also, the report did not -- excuse me, did not identify what substantial harm is occurring now that section 5 can't reach. although we did appear to embrace an expansion of the contact of harm to include the occasional or rather in tangible interests which the ftc's unfair statement indicated would not make an injury and fair. and in mission to the ftc report there have been calls for the more general privacy laws from other quarters. thinking about the calls for additional legislation i would like to hear the personal analogy which has a gender bias to it. but i started thinking about transitioning my wardrobe to my but i learned before it hit the stores to buy anything new that i should take an inventory of

the close this already in my closet to avoid buying things that i already have. and i believe it is similarly important for policy makers for what is already in stock and the ftc closet before seeking the privacy law. and i am not necessarily against the new legislation and there are a number of existing laws in addition to section 5 such as the fair credit reporting act, gramm-leach-bliley and others. there are important parts of the agency arsenal, and obviously there are privacy laws outside of the ftc purview such as hippa, the audiences familiar with the cable privacy law that also provided important protection for consumers. but before seeking new privacy legislation, i think it's important to identify the gap in the statutory authority were to identify a case of substantial consumer harm that we would like to address but we can't within our existing authority

especially given the array of the financial medical health and safety harm that were already reachable under the current ftc authority. otherwise i think it is very difficult to tell whether the consumer is -- with the additional protection is necessary, and second, whether they will on balance make consumers better off because there are many benefits to the information sharing for consumers such as reducing online fraud, improving product and services and increasing competition in the market overall. so that's why i'm concerned about treating privacy solely as a consumer protection issue. and i believe that privacy like most other issues of the cftc jurisdiction must also be viewed in the constitutional lens if we want to reach the best outcome for consumers. and the ftc israeli position on the federal agencies to balance consumer protection and competition in its analysis. for example, the privacy restrictions have an effect on

competition by savoring entrenched entities that already have consumer data with a new entrance to obtain such information or it could encourage the consolidation for purposes of sharing data and as a constitution agency, the ftc should be sensitive to these kind of concerns. so, the commission has consistently recognized the crucial role of the long misleading advertising plays in fostering the competition between the current participants in the market as well as lowering the entry barriers for the competitors. however, in its privacy report, the commission did not address possible competitiveness factors of the recommendations including potentially reducing slow information in the marketplace and then certainly the services and products that depend on the accessibility need for such data and this could be an unintended consequence cost of compliance with new regulations so perhaps the unintended consequence depending on the type of data that is involved. some, notably the american bar

association antitrust section has a comment on the ftc's preliminary privacy report that highlighted the need to wield carefully the benefits and costs associated with proposals to enhance privacy. and the aba comment pointed out that although the report emphasized that to make meaningful choices, consumers need more information about how their data will be used. but it did not assess the value consumers take away from additional uses of their information that facilitate competition. for example, consumers that choose not to allow their information to be shared -- collected or shared, will no longer be exposed to offers by competitors selling products or services that provide better value or pricing or quality. and in turn, these changes could have negative consequences, not just for the individual consumer but for the market place overall. as a supreme court stated in the virginia state pharmacy case, and i am quoting here,

advertising, however access if it sometimes may seem it is nonetheless the dissemination of information as to who is producing and selling what product, for what reason and at what price. so long as we preserve a predominantly free market, free enterprise economy the allocation of our resources is in large measure will be made in the economic decisions. it is a matter of public interest that those decisions in the aggregate be intelligent and well informed. to this end the free flow of commercial information is indispensable and that is the end of the quote. so a policy that limits the ability of advertisers to to access and use information to reach the target audiences may have unintended affect some consumers in the marketplace that any policymaker particularly one with the responsibility for consumer protection and competition must consider. now of course to raise this question on the effect of competition does not mean that i would never support any new

privacy law. it simply means i believe that we must at least ask that question if we want to ensure the best outcome for consumers. turning back to my earlier shopping knowledge, there is one accessory that i would support adding to the ftc wardrobe and that is the federal law for the data security and breach of education. although they can proceed using section 5 authority and since 2001 has brought over 30 cases against companies failing to protect consumer information i think there are gaps that could be close to carefully crafted federal legislation. currently almost all states have data securely laws on the books that require consumer medications if personal one for mission has been compromised. and although some of bill laws are similar this means the companies need to comply with separate state manage requirements there may be different treasurers and consumers may get modifications

that are different and reflect different types of the the breeches. and i believe a single standard would let the companies know what to do and consumers would know what to expect. i believe if carefully crafted, such is likely to benefit both consumers and businesses particularly because unlike the uses of consumer inflation for advertising or product improvement reduction, there are no benefits to consumers or competition from a loving the consumer data to be stolen. of course any such law would have to be carefully crafted to decide what reasonable precaution for safeguarding various types of data to impose to avoid imposing underclass not justified by consumer benefits. succumb i've talked a lot about law enforcement here but i also wanted to talk a little bit about some of the other tools that we use. so while law enforcement is critically important, in some respects the education mission impacts a greater percentage of

consumers from anything else that we do. for example the information available on the web page to help consumers avoid becoming victims of identity theft has had millions of hits and the paper versions have had a very wide distribution to millions more consumers. and if it doesn't work we offer excellent resources on the steps to take to mitigate the damages of having your identity stolen and how to protect their credit stores and not fall victim to scams and that the ever popular do-not-call list and how to sign up for that. in addition to the consumer education, the ftc produces, in addition to this protecting your identity information, we also produce consumer education about keeping kids safe on line such as our award winning brochard for parents called netcetera and a community outreach tool kit to help community organizations

churches, other civic organizations help this information with people and this outreach is a particular strength for the commission. we also sponsor public workshops on the host of consumer issues and these defense help our staff understand complex issues from a variety of stakeholder perspectives and also provide a forum for which to share our agency expertise. this thursday we are holding a workshop to explore innovation designed for wrongdoers for taking the caller id and stop unwanted calls. and the panelists will discuss developing solutions to the problem of unwanted cause and call authentication and call walking so that is kind of how we approach them if there is a new issue we will have a workshop before we take any position and find out from the industry what problems they see and what solutions they might have and learn from the consumer groups and academics and we will

often hear from technologists and try to get a very clear understanding of what the problem is. and just yesterday the commission announced a workshop to be held on december 6th which is to export practices and privacy implications of a comprehensive collection of internet user data, so this is another privacy oriented workshop. and this workshop like all the others sponsored by the ftc will include speakers representing the major stakeholders in the the date and details about the workshop are available on the workshop on the web site, ftc.gov. finally, one of the challenges faced by the ftc and really any government agency is keeping abreast of new technology. and understanding how the impact consumers and privacy. ..

can uses of our smartphones from being a payment device to possibly being a medical device. so all of these raise privacy issues. and so because mobile technologies are moving with lightning speed, the commission determined it needed to have a dedicated staff working exclusively on mobile issues and thus the mobile technology unit was established. and this mobile technology unit issued a report on mobile apps for children and

hosted a workshop on mobile disclosures including privacy disclosures and the report and the workshop examined the adequacy of information that app stores and developers provide to parents about what information is being collected, how it will be shared and who will have access to it and we also have reached out to industry to improving these disclosures is. this unit is following up with a survey to find out, now we looked at apps and looked at privacy disclosures but we need to look at the next piece to look what apps we're collecting, what types of information they were collecting soft that is the next piece. this mobile unit brought six law enforcement cases. so, i've covered a lot of ground with you today, and so, just let me briefly restate the three points with which i hope to leave you. first, i'm not convinced that the ftc is currently lacking any statutory authority in the general privacy area. and for now, section 5 seems sufficient to protect consumers.

second, the commission must analyze issues under its purview from a per executive that covers both consumer protection and competition or it may not reach the best result for consumers. and finally the commission should use all the all the tools in its arsenal. business, education, research and policy development, to reach sort of the maximum target audience to find out what issues do we need to know about and what should the commission be focusing on in the future? as the newest commissioner in the ftc as one with most experience with the ftc i plan to do all i can to insure we do all we can for the american consumers. that concludes my remarks. we seem to have a very knowledgeable audience so i would love to hear from the audience and others issues i'm considering. should i join you here at

the table? >> however you want to do it. [applause] thank you very much. >> you're welcome. >> those very thoughtful comments. we've been very much expecting to hear these thoughts on privacy and for the folks following us online or on c-span, you can submit comments either, on twitter, at hashtag hudson privacy or on facebook at facebook.com/hudsoninstitute. with that, let me return the podium to you, commissioner ohlhausen to answer questions from the audience. >> great. do you think the ftc has done enough to inform industry about the agency's expectations when it comes to privacy and reasonable data security measures? and if not, what else should

we do? do folks feel like they're in the dark? do they feel like they understand, you know, what we expect and why we expect it? >> do we have a mic? >> please identify yourself and --. >> [inaudible]. somewhere along the line in the last five years the supreme court made a ruling on internet sales. which, more or less -- fcc and a lot of sales were false. in many cases the buyers were tainted. and i've been wondering, -- [inaudible] and while we wondered about how we recover things and all these people have to go to court and go to the state where the company is and try to sue them in court. go in and present a case. so, that's basically where we are. and makes it very difficult

decision on what to do and well, i just wanted, does that mean -- supreme court, what is the supreme court on some of these issues? supreme court says no your seller to some extent. you have to deal with them on a personal level. you have to -- [inaudible] somehow know them directly. you can not just rely on the internet whether it is close interaction between buyers and sellers. that is -- [inaudible] and on top of that ebay buyer protection has limits some you're still at risk on higher priced items. i wondered, is there anymore review of this type of case and what can be done to strengthen internet sales

since you yourself, are interested in the internet? >> so, you raise a good point about internet fraud and that is certainly a problem with the ftc has been trying to address i think since the advent of the consumer internet and we have tried to be active in all those spaces. it's an issue certainly for consumers if there's deception. if they have been told the product is one thing and they get something different. that's certainly a problem. and we've brought suite of cases and we engage in consumer education to warn consumers about what scams might be going on. we also have international, like we have the u.s. safe web act which allows us to share information internationally to find out if there is any internet scams being direct understood the u.s. from call centers outside the u.s. so currently, you raise a good point. it is really a problem we are trying to address that.

>> thank you, commissioner, for your comments. this summer aspen summit that ppi had there was a discussion about innovation and the ftc's role in how innovation happens. one of the questions was of the, there were two commissioners at that point on the panel, was, how companies know if the innovations they're talking about may go across the line? that the ftc may get concerned about. some of the comments were we probably should come up with a bright line. other people said if you do that you may actually harm innovation. i guess i wonder about that issue because it is an important one for companies to understand, you know, what the ftc looks at in this space. i give you one specific example. in the privacy report, this workshop you referred to, and my view of workshops generally they're designed to educate the ftc ahead of time what issues they need to look at and maybe do

something about. this work swhop was proposed after the ftc did the progress report and seems to me it is kind of backwards. i'm not really sure what the workshop, what the purpose of it will be. so maybe you could comment on that because i think that whole workshop will, could have an impact on innovation. >> so you raised two issues there and i'll try to address both of them. in the first one the ftc tries to look at everything from the consumers point of view. so certainly in the in the area if there is a promise to the consumer how his or her information will be used the consumer expects that problem is to be kept. in unfairness, something there is a harm, financial, medical safety or and children are a special case under the childrens online privacy protection act. those would sort of be our starting points where the line should be drawn but obviously the lines can blur

a little bit and they can change over time because consumer expectations can change and consumers have more knowledge over time about certain uses but then something new comes along and kind of everyone has to adjust to that. now, as for the workshop that's coming up, i think one of the things that's aimed at is, a lot of our previous work has looked at online behavioral advertising. a lot of discussion has been in the context of online behavioral advertising. i think the commission would like to broaden out to look a little more into other ways the data is being collected, not just, through online behavioral advertising or uses for online behavioral advertising. so trying to look at i think a broader pool. i, the fact that we're looking at it doesn't necessarily mean we will do anything additional but it's a good way to keep ourselves up-to-date sort of what the developments are in the marketplace. >> [inaudible]. i just want to ask you, do you have any thoughts what came out of europe today as

far as some of the changes that the european data privacy commissioners called on google to make to its privacy changes? the ftc did not do anything in response to that but do you have any thoughts on some of the recommendations the europeans made to google on that? >> so let me look at them very briefly so i wouldn't claim to have deep knowledge of them but some of the things they are emphasizing are, fuller explanations to consumers of what the data is collected and how it will be used. particular concerns about mobile, and, sort of having these deeper and more advanced privacy notices. which i think, i think it is interesting and certainly the european model is somewhat different from the u.s. model. one of the things that we talked about, or the ftc talked about in the privacy report which issued before i came, is the concept though of giving consumers, maybe layered notices or notices

in a way, not every consumer wants, you know, the most detailed explanation, but maybe it should be there somewhere for the consumers who are the most privacy sensitive and the most interested. and so i think, you know, there is this tension between giving consumers tons and tons of highly detailed information and really overwhelming them with the amount of information that most consumers wouldn't find useful. so we're trying to find the right balance between providing kind of top level, the top line information that many, many consumers would like versus very, very in depth and i think in the e.u. they may come to a different balance than we would in the u.s.. >> commissioner ohlhausen, from tech freedom. getting back to your question or the question discussed earlier how the ftc can adequately inform

industry what the rules are and how to predict the ftc's auctions in the future, in most areas of the law counsel for companies, especially small companies can look at case law and understand how decisions were made and can offer their clients guidance how they think concepts like deception or unfairness will be applied in the future that is also true on the other side of your aisle in your agency of antitrust. there are court cases and summarized by the agency in guidelines the problem i see on the ftc side for consumer protection that doesn't happen. that process is short-circuited because until now, until the windham case, not aware of any company actually litigate ad privacy case. in light of that, how do you think that the ftc can, if we take that for granted, actually try to solve that problem to provide more guidance to companies about not just, what particular

practices they find in a particular case which you can see from a consent decree but more importantly what their analysis is in those cases? how they think they have satisfied the unfairness and deception policy statements. so what do you think about that and would you support in particular having the agency instead of issuing reports that offer its views as to what the law should be or what best practices should be maybe issuing guidelines that explain how the agency in past cases applied those doctrines in order to give some understanding in the future as to how the law might develop? going forward in every particular case, doing more than the normal federal rules of pleading would require when they bring a case, explaining more, knowing that the case is not actually to be resolved in court and knowing it will wind up in consent decree and initial pleading and consent decree are really all anybody on the outside looking at in understanding how the agency interprets

its own longstanding policy statements? >> i'm a big fan of agency transparency overall. this is an issue i talked about on the consumer protection side and the antitrust side. i think it is incumbent upon us to give clear guidance to all constituencies, business, consumer groups, congress, anybody who is interested really and what the ftc sees as its mission and how its applying its laws in a particular instance. so i do think it could be useful to have something like guidance or further guidelines on where we see things in the privacy area, where deception is, what's unfair and i do think one of the benefits of actually having a lit guided case -- litigated case like wyndham is are we right? does the court agree? have we drawn the lines in the right place? i think that is one of the benefits.

when we have consent analysis to public comment that gives discussion or maybe our discussion could be fuller and that is something i definitely would consider. on the antitrust side i recently objected to ftc rescinding policy guidance how it would apply some of its enforcement tools. >> yes, ma'am. i just wondered where you were on the google antitrust investigation? if you supported that or what you >> it wouldn't be appropriate for me or really any other agency official to talk about an ongoing investigation, so i will have to decline to comment. >> does the national do-not-call list, do they accept political campaign advertising? >> they do not and the reason is because it's not a commercial call it is, has a different level of protection under the first amendment. so we, there's a doctrine,

commercial speech doctrine where commercial speech can be subject to more regulation than political speech. >> are those exempted? >> did you say accept or exempt? >> exempt i'm sorry. >> it does exempt it, yes, i'm sorry. >> why was that again, i'm sorry? >> because under the first amendment political speech has a higher level of protection than commercial speech. so we see it regulated in the same way. >> i see. >> everyone is so quiet. should i ask another question. >> why don't you -- >> okay. >> there is another question. >> there is another question. >> madam commissioner, i thought your presentation on how privacy policy fits into section 5 was very persuasive. however, it seems to me there is substantial number of cases where internet firms are collecting information on consumer

behavior, not for the purpose of improving service to that customer the way amazon taylors new book announcements depending what you have purchased in the past but simply gathering aggregate information, that may have some public good but really doesn't affect me as a consumer. i'm not sure how section 5 quite fits this very substantial amount of collection of information about behavior of individuals for purposes of putting together large aggregates. if, if, i'm told by some firm that i'm doing business with on the internet, that they want to, they want permission to collect information to improve their services to me i can imagine one answer and if they just want to collect it as part of some general customer behavior information it's going to have no effect on me i might give them a

different answer. so if you had the same amount of preliminary disclosure i'm not sure that, i'm not sure that that really fits because a lot of this information could be very valuable. the privacy implications to the individual could be trivial to nonexistent and yet if you had them, you had disclosure and so forth, and so on, you would, you could get very low, it could impair the value of the information that they collect. >> right. so there are many different types of information that could be collected of varying levels of sensitivity. so for example, you know, a company, an ad network might be interested in collecting, you know, ideas of like, what people, you know, if you go to a sports site, what website are you likely to go to next? are you likely to go to another sports site or a news site or at a golf site

or are you likely -- there are all different levels and ways that information could be used there is a lot of options being considered now to give consumers a little more nuanced control about some of the collection and use of their information through online, you know, online behavioral advertising, online tracking. so in the ftc's privacy report they tried to capture some of this focused on the context of the transaction. so because the other thing is, you don't want to, flood consumers with too many, you know, check this box or, here's what we're doing because, that becomes just an impediment to them. so we try to look at the context of the transaction and does the consume expect this information will be used in a certain way. certainly one of the areas of wide discussion right now has to do with online tracking and perhaps the ability to give consumers a little more of a nuanced choice which is something i know i'm interested in seeing how the self-regulatory process

plays out, to see if something can be reached to give consumers interested that level of control to opt out of some of the information collection. >> i just had another question. do you know when we'll see the revised rules and also do you support the latest proposed changes? >> so because it is an on going rule making, i can't really comment about the copa rules. it is before me for consideration right now, much like an investigation. sorry. >> [inaudible]. >> the comment period closed on september 24th i believe. we got a lot of comments. so we're reading through them and going through all of them but i don't have a prediction about exactly when a decision might come out. >> if i could just make a point on process, commissioner ohlhausen is

very cleverly come up with a new format where she asks questions and -- >> yeah. >> we will, we'll have a session for general questions afterwards. so i think the question before the floor is, are there better ways that, the ftc can give information to, to the public about certain issues and i think to the extent we're going outside of that and let's get back to commissioner ohlhausen's questions. >> on privacy, it's related i think. just wondered if the commissioner thought there should be more cooperation between the u.s. and europe on privacy regulation and if so, what you could do about that? >> well, there are ongoing dialogues between the u.s. and europe on privacy. i think that's an important role to, to help international commerce.

so, my understanding is that, there's a lot of it going on right now. i don't know whether we need more or not but i can say there is a substantial amount occurring now. i can broaden out my questions, actually, beyond, to ask, generally, what do you think we should be paying attention to in the future? what do you think is coming down the road? is it cloud computing. do you think that should raise issues we should pay attention to or mobile payments. some of the new services and things available to consumers these days? stunned everyone into silence. >> well, i'll follow up on that. >> okay. >> just actually does go to some of the international issues that are created with cloud computing and just the jurisdiction of servers around the world. a user may make an inquiry

online and might pass through countless numbers of jurisdictions, which privacy laws apply both from the perspective of the consumer and also from the perspective of information providers along the way? >> i think that raises, that raises a very, you know, important issue. it's something that cloud, as you say, cloud computing really brings to the fore. the ftc has been trying to make sure that consumers expectations in the u.s. and promises that are made to consumers in the u.s. are fulfilled. we do have the safe web act which is a way for us to be able to share information internationally and gather information. it is up for renewal by congress and we hope we would get it. it expires next year. that is a challenge and because countries have sensitivities about people coming in and getting information, you know, from servers located in their

country so. i wish there was an easy answer but i would say if a company in the u.s. makes a promise to a consumer that information will be protected in some way and that it is violated, even if it's because of a breach that occurred somewhere else, though, if it was under that company's control i think we could probably still establish ftc jurisdiction over that company and that promise. >> i was going to say, third party tracking, notifying of consumers -- i'm sorry, i was going to say notifying consumers of third party tracking, you don't know who is tracking you and where it's going. you click on a link, you want to buy something and at the bottom of your bar you see all these click sites popping up they're paying your primary site to access what you're doing. so mortise closure of third -- more disclosure of third party tracking that

people don't know about? >> good for consumers who don't know what's happening certainly. >> in the back. >> building on my earlier question, it seems, i think implicit in the ftc's admission that unfairness is about weighing substantial injury against counterveiling benefit as well to the degree consumers themselves avoid a practice it is concerned about. i think it would be incredibly helpful for the ftc to do more quantitative work on exactly what the substantial injury is we're concerned billion. in other words, how doctrinally, does the ftc define harm? what sort of benefits do they see? how they weigh those things against each other and what sort of user empowerment tools are out there and how do we know if they're good enough? i think those three questions would be incredibly helpful. they're not new questions, they're questions already inherent in your policy

statement. at the bureau economics is a great resource yet i've seen nothing from the agency on that to try to quantify any of this or provide some analytical rigor that could both inform policymakers and also help us understand what the agency is doing. maybe put to bed some of the myth that the agency is helpless without new legislation, which might be particularly ful in europe where everyone seems to assume we don't have a baseline consumer protection law which of course we do. >> well i think your point really do echo what i said, what i said in my remarks. that we should be asking these questions. one of the things we should also consider in, you know, we are an agency with limited resources. so we need to focus our activities on areas where the most consumer harm is happening. if there are tools in the marketplace through options in the marketplace, that consumers can use, to, better express the privacy preferences, you know, that's an important thing to

think about. we want to focus on problems that consumers can't necessarily fix themselves, so. >> i was wondering to what extent you might be involved in mortgage financing? >> so -- >> problems or issues. >> so the ftc, we do have a division of financial practices and certainly deception and unfairness applies not just to privacy. it applies across the board to all of our work. we share jurisdiction with the consumer financial protection bureau but we can bring enforcement regarding non-bank lenders. we don't have any authority over banks. we never have. that is something we pay attention to in our division of financial practices that brought a number of cases involving, you know, failure, deceptive practices in mortgages. again, but it has to be from a non-bank lender.

>> [inaudible]. the past question, so there is this new kid on the block, the cfpb, there are two bureaucracies. you have to find where one begins and other ends. can you tell us about your experiences where those lines are? >> we have a memorandum of understanding with the cfpb and we are try to make sure we're not imposing things that are conflicting or duplicative. it makes sense for us to focus on non-bank lenders and for them to be active in areas we can't be active in. we actually have a number of other agencies we share jurisdiction with. the fcc is one of them. certainly department of justice antitrust division, the fda we had a history in the past of being able to share things efficiently with other agencies. i hope we can do the same

with the cnpb. >> commissioner, following up on that, there must be kises that, potentially -- cases that potentially involve one or more agencies. how does the ftc go about resolving jurisdictional conflicts? >> so, we have a very good staff and very active staff. they have a lot of interaction with the staff of other agencies. so for example, there's the, identity theft task force. there is a number of different agencies that play a role in that. we would try to address issues through a task force like that. on some areas, i have the most experience with dividing thing up with the department of justice antitrust division certainly where we have a basically a an informal clearance agreement based on expertise. there are some carveouts that we have but for example, in my previous incarnation at the ftc we brought a lot of cases involving real

estate, issues involving online real estate, business models traditional realtors were setting up rules to sort of fence off competition from those folks. and so we in the department of justice did that together where the department of justice brought the case against the national association of realtors and the ftc brought cases against local multiple listing services. there are a variety of different ways we can do it. where there is overlapping jurisdiction sometimes takes more cooperation. for example, in certain areas like the ftc of a common carrier exemption. so a common carrier act, as a common carrier we can't bring a proceeding against them but for some things involving cramming of false charges onto a bill we could talk to the ftc who could focus more on carrier and ftc could focus on the third party aggregator who is not the carrier. >> next question. . .

>> will they reach resolution or have things stalled. >> seize the microphone here, but i think the only person in the room who's actually involved in that process as an invited expert, and i have to say that it's not, it's not going well. [laughter] it's, um, it's really remarkable to me that, um, this process which i think many people in industry and in this country

signed onto on the understanding that they reached with the white house in february that this was really intended to work out a techal specification -- technical spes fission case, the commitment to build an opt-out tool have been very, very surprised that the process has turned into a policy making process. it really is intended to reshape how data is collected worldwide, um, and in particular i think they have felt and i've seen firsthanthat there's been strong pressure brought to bear through that process, through a combination of europeans on the one hand, in particular the article 29 working party of european data protection authorities, the ftc itself whether they intended to or not, but by particing this process, they have sent a message to people and industry that they very well better comply. and some of your fellow commissioners have made comments to the effect that noncompliance with an industry standard could

itself be actionable under section 5 which, i think, has really intimidated many an industry. and then finally, it must be said that this is, at the end of the day, a process by which major players, in the particular the browser makers, are, frankly, colluding to change the way that the internet works. and that may be for good ends, but it's a process that normally would raise antitrust scrutiny at your agency rather than being encouraged by your chairman. so it has left many of us scratching our heads as to why it is that this international body which includes no democratically-elected people, has no official role in any of this is trying to reorganize data collection in a way that really could fundamentally change the way the internet works. it could privilege some business models over others and could allow some companies, potentially, to gain a significant leg up on their rivals by, i think, frankly

cynically invoking the concept of privacy. so i have to say for all those reasons as well as the fact that that entire procedure is operating on the basis of undefined terms, that is to say about 20 of the key terms that we're talking about are still not defined, it's really not possible to reach any sort of consensus on those things. and then just two quick final points. one, the process is supposed to resolve matters based on consensus, and i think there's a strong feeling in the room that that's not actually being followed, that the chairs and those who are making decisions are doing so because they have preconceived notions about what data collection should look like. and then finally, the entire process, i think, is being rushed through on a political schedule. which is one in the u.s., i think it's pretty clear that your chairman has put a lot of time and effort into this and would very much like to see it resolved. i don't think that's a particularly good reason to rush

the process forward. and on the other hand in europe, of course, the europeans have made it clear that their regulation is going forward early next year, and they'll go forward with or without the wccc. and at the end of the day all this is just to say that enormous pressure is being brought to bear on everyone in that process, and yet we're a very long way away from reaching any sort of real consensus, and the very process itself is subject, i think, to some important criticisms that are really not going heeded here because most of the coverage about this has really focused on this being a noble effort that is intended to protect consumers, um, without any real awareness of what's really at play here, the other forces at work and, indeed, the limitations of the process as it is. it isn't, it isn't and it never was a limitation on tracking. it is a limitation on use. and i think now that people are finally starting to understand that here, it's starting to cause some folks in congress to get upset about this, and that in turn is helping to, i think,

derail that process. so in answer to your question, i'm not very optimistic, and i'm more than a little concerned about what's been driving it. >> well, it's good to hear views there lots of different people. you raise a couple of important points. i believe on the, um, the issue of whether the action under section 5 for a company not to adhere to if a standard -- [inaudible] i believe that would be based on if a company says it will adhere to it and then it doesn't. that is kind of a traditional ftc-type of case and maybe not so much that if there's a standard out there, you must adhere to it even if you haven't made a promise to. then secondly, in any standard-setting organization there are certainly competitive issues that can arise and, you know, the kind of balance. many, you know, pro-competitive self-regulatory organizations and activities and standards but not to discount the possibility that in some cases something

anti-competitive could arise. but i appreciate you, you know, kind of raising those concerns because that's the kind of thing, you know, is very helpful to hear about, is to hear what people are thinking about this process to see whether, you know, we'll ultimately offer a new option to consumers or whether they will be able to reach a consensus on that. >> any other questions? >> let's see. um, so some folks have touched on this already, but i wanted to put it out sort of more overtly. so given the dynamic nature of high-tech markets, where do you see the biggest pitfall, for the ftc's enforcement efforts. where do you think, you know, our efforts could raise the most risks of not having a beneficial outcome for consumers.

i'm sure it's not the case of empathies everything we do is -- everyone thinks everything we do is wonderful. so maybe discretion is the better part of valor. >> i'll raise an issue. >> okay. >> this would be more on the antitrust side. the challenges of defining markets in high technology areas where technology is rapidly changing and it's really very difficult at times to figure out, well, how do you define the market, who are the market apartments and those might change -- participants, and those might change six months from now. and it strikes me as very interesting, actually, that if you look at some of the largest technology companies in the united states, the antitrust issues have been more of enforcement of unfair competition issues than they have been in, say, the merger and acquisition context.

i was just curious if you have any thoughts about how the ftc looks at defining markets in high technology areas. >> um, so you're absolutely right. those are markets that are, you know, marked by big changes, you know, the new competitor comes, and everything looks different. and one of the things we need to be aware of and careful about is that we are, um, trying to make our enforcement decisions and our predictions based on the world, um, as it is right now or maybe where it will be going in a few months and not where it was a year ago. so one of the tools that we have , barron touched on this a little bit, but i wanted to highlight it, we do have an entire bureau of economics. so we have economists who can try to help us figure out these things. and one of the things we've been able to use in the past to figure out are we, you know, are we taking the right factors into consideration is to do a retrospective and to say, you

know, we made this guess that the market would be a certain way, were we right? did we come to the right conclusions? did the bad things that we think would happen happen, or did bad things happen that we didn't foresee? is and so one of the things that often comes to mind, now, this was a transaction that ended up being abandoned by the parties, but it was, i believe, in 2005 block buster and hollywood video wanted to merge, and the ftc was reviewing it. again -- >> right. >> -- they abandoned the transaction, but i'm not sure at the time we really understood how quickly, um, streaming was really going to start take over that market and how much, you know, between netflix with discs in the mail and now everybody being able to access video content through a lot more channels, you know, what that really meant for that. and sometimes things change during our review of a transaction. so, for example, the google/ad mob merger was an issue where we

started investigating it, there only seemed to be a certain number of players in the market, and another strong player said it was going to enter, and we ended up closing the investigation and explaining why. so it's something we immediate to pay close -- we need to pay close attention to. i certainly think that using, you know, our economists also getting out and talking to a bunch of different groups and trying to stay educated and a little bit ahead of things. when i used to be head of policy planning at the ftc, that was a job that had no inbox, right? i wasn't getting merger filings, i wasn't getting, you know, you must solve this in a certain amount of time. my job was to see over the horizon a little bit and see what issues the ftc really needed to educate itself about in time to really understand the changes in the market. so it's something that we need to keep, um, as an institutional function to keep in mind, so we need the resources and tools in the agency to be able to do that.

>> questions from the floor. >> thank you, commissioner. [inaudible] just a question, if you would project into the future about 20 or 30 years, and i know this is a grand crystal ball type of thing, but it's part of your job, too, i would think. given some of the inroads in privacy and security and also the inroads of the marketplace into people's privacy, what kind of world are we constructing? it almost strikes me a little bit like 1984 on one level but brave new world on the other where people find those things that will please people, and you're sort of pleasing the consumer, pleasing the masses. what do you predict our world will be like, what will our psychology be like? because we're affected by either how exposed we are or how our

sense of security is affected by that. >> so, um, one thing i would mention is i realize that i'm not good at predicting, okay? my sister is a computer science ph.d., and she was in this field way before i really knew what any of this was. and she told me a long time ago there's this thing called the internet that we computer researchers use, we put up our cds, they're called pages, and we see what research others are doing so we can collaborate better. and what i said to her was, oh, how interesting. and what i thought to myself was, doesn't sound very useful to me. [laughter] so i understand the limits of my ability to forecast in that way. and so one of, one of the rules that i try to apply is to, um, is to not try to come up with a solution to, you know, now for something way in the future. so that's one thing, because i think our ability to know what the problem is and what the

problem will be a year from now doesn't mean we shouldn't look at it, but we should be careful about imposing solutions that, um, are too restrictive and don't take into account these changes that might occur. the other thing i wanted to mention is that there is a big difference between how young people view their information and their privacy and how older people view it. and so, um, i think a number of years ago it would have been hard to predict that people would share their information so freely, that people would feel so comfortable with it. but what we're supposed to be doing at the ftc is reflecting consumer preferences and not replacing consumers' preferences with our own preferences. so that's another thing that i want to keep sensitive to in the future, that this is something that, you know, if consumers feel comfortable doing as long as, you know, there's not something happening they don't know about, then my job is to help to make sure the promises that are made to consumers are kept and that consumers get to have an array of choices in the marketplace to meet their own preferences.

>> hi, matt, tech freedom. you had mentioned earlier that the ftc has limited resources. what are your thoughts on, um, developing more in-house expertise such as the bureau of economics? >> yes. so we have, um, about 70 ph.d. economists on our staff, and we try to have them certainly do case support but also to be able to do their own research so that they can develop expertise in some areas that, you know, may not be useful like right now, today on this particular case, but might be useful, you know, in a year or two. we also now have a chief technologist on staff which i think was a very good, good development. the other thing that i encourage, we had a budget meeting earlier this year, and one of the things that i encouraged the agency to consider is the federal work force is going to face a lot of

retirements in the next year or so and that we should consider as those people retire that the young people we bring in or -- i shouldn't just say young people, but the nonretirement-age people that we bring in are, have some of these skills, have some of this knowledge and familiarity with new technologies, new uses of technologies and things like that. so there's a way for us to keep abreast of changes by kind of updating our work force naturally as people retire and they get replaced. >> we have an online question. from user name howard feinberg. if the ntia multistakeholder process on mobile apps privacy does not agree perfectly on a voluntary code of conduct, will the ftc just enforce their own? i don't know -- >> well, so our code of conduct, our baseline is always going to be deception and unfairness.

so if there's a promise made to a consumer that's not met, then that would be a problem. and if sensitive information is collected and its use would meet the unfairness doctrine, then w. i think the fcc may have a role to play in this as well. that's something we'd have to talk with them about. there is a baseline even if there isn't something additional. >> further questions? >> you mentioned the notion of consumer preferences and wanting to reflect consumer preferences. um, a lot of people out there sort of representing consumers think this and that. how do you sort of acquire knowledge in this domain, what do you know, what would you like to know? >> um, so i would love to see some more research on these topics. what do consumers really think, what kind of choices would they make. i mean, it's very easy in response to a survey to say, oh, i, you know, i wouldn't like

this, or i wouldn't like that. but how does consumers really behave in the real world. i would find that useful. there's some economic research that has been helpful that also looked at, you know, there's always going to be advertising. the internet's generally an advertising-supported model. so if we restrict some kinds of information collection and use for advertising purposes, that doesn't mean advertising's going to go away. it means you're going to get a different type of advertising, and is that better for consumers? do consumers prefer that versus the type of advertising that they may get when some information about them is collected ask used? so really kind of a better understanding of, um, you know, the economics of information exchange and the kind of the but-for world would be useful for me. >> a follow-up. in a lot of areas i've observed more information coming not from surveys, but from experiments. >> uh-huh. >> so is the ftc in a position

to fund any experiments, or are you going to have to rely on the helpful efforts of othersing? >> it's possible we may be able to do some economic research in this area. we certainly do have some budget for our economists to do that. but one of the things that i found when e was head of the office of policy and planning that really paid dividends is when we were able to focus attention on an issue, and academic researchers took it and ran with it. often academic researchers are looking for a topic that they can do something new in but that will play into a larger debate so it gets more exposure. so i think being able to get out and talk about these things, i hope, would seed some ideas more broadly as well. >> so if we have anybody either in our audience, either here or remotely who's writing a dissertation, looking for a topic, this is the kind of thing you'd suggest, so do some experiments with consumers and see what their revealed preferences are? >> yes, absolutely. that would be very helpful. and so i used to head up, as i mentioned, a policy office.

and part of what we did was write advocacy comments to other federal agencies on topics as well as reports. but often we would draw very heavily upon the academic research that was out there in both law and economics to support what we were saying. >> question? >> commissioner, maybe you'd like to elaborate a little bit on the qualitative/quantitative research that was done by the bureau of economics on the mortgage disclosures? >> yes. so this is one of the most kind of instructive things that i learned about, you know, the effects of regulation. so a number of years ago, um, hud was considering doing a disclosure of it's called the yolk spread premium. it's kind of a function of how mortgages, um, if you get through a broker versus a direct lend, how they get, how that person gets paid. and so, um, hud wanted to disclose this thinking it would be good for consumers, and the

ftc filed a comment that said, you know, you should take a step back, and you should test whether that really will make consumers better off. will they understand that. not only could it lead to consumer confusion, but secondly, if it seemed to be favoring one side of the market rather than the other, the brokered loans versus the direct loans, it could have a competitive effect. hud wasn't that interested in what we had to say, okay? they saw our comment and said, gee, thanks. but then our bureau of economics did a study where they actually tested the proposed hud disclosure and found out that it confused consumers into choosing a more expensive mortgage like a substantial amount at the time, maybe as much as 25% or 30% of the time. so that was a situation in which giving consumers more information but in a way that wasn't clear to them and wasn't relevant to the decision that they were trying to make could actually hurt consumers. so then he did studies about what is a better way to have these forms for consumers to disclose this information, and

our economists have continued to play an important role this giving this kinds of advice the some of the federal financial agencies about, look, you know, we understand you have a good goal, and you want to give consumers more information, but it has to be in a way that is tested, you know, are you really achieving what you want to achieve, and, um, in a context that is explainable and understandable to consumers. eventually, the hud rule got pulled, by the way, on the yield spread premium. not just because of our study, but that was at least one of the reasons. >> always glad to hear about the constructive role of economists in the government. question here. >> i wonder if you might have an opinion. so on the legislation that's maybe going through the house on cybersecurity and the information sharing that's proposed as part of that, do you envisage the ftc having a role

in the future if that extends more broadly away from the current infrastructure into small industry how consumer information might be protected? >> so certainly, the ftc could, i think, help play a role in explaining, you know, what are some of the consumers, the types of information consumers consider private, what are some of the steps that we found are necessary to help protect them in private companies. i wouldn't comment about government collection of information or government's securing networks, that kind of thing. but, for example, one of the things we found in our data security cases is sometimes it's really the weakest link somewhere that the data's getting out. so we've had examples of very basic -- i mean, you think high-tech. some of our cases have involved companies just taking paper, um, medical records, prescription data, data about prescriptions, people's applications for mortgages and just putting them in the dumpster, right?

not even shredded. or sometimes your password for your whole system is password, things like that. so i think maybe some practical advice on some of that, you know, that kind of stuff, the ftc could be a useful source on. >> and with that, let's give a round of applause to commissioner ohlhausen. >> thank you so much. [applause] >> this concludes this session of the center for the economics of the internet. our next session will be on november 28th. thank you very much. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> we have more live coverage coming up later this afternoon. education advisers to the obama and romney campaigns will talk about their candidates' education platforms. and that gets underway at 4:30 eastern from the american enterprise institute. we'll have it here for you on c-span2. also this afternoon we'll go to the cato institute for a discussion on the libertarian roots of the tea party.

live coverage of that starts at 4 p.m. eastern. it's on our companion network, c-span. in every presidential election since 1992, presidential hopefuls have taken their questions from undecided voters in a town hall-style debate. tonight watch president obama and mitt romney in their town hall debate from long island's hofstra university. live coverage starts at 7 eastern on c-span, c-span radio and online at c-span.org/debates. get extended features, sights and sounds before and after the debate and twitter reaction. well, c-span's bringing you live coverage from around the country of house, senate and governors' debates between now and november 6th. earlier this month several candidates faced off in a debate for california's 26th district seat left open by the retirement of republican rules committee chair david dreier. this hour and a half long debate between julia brownley and republican tony strickland took

place at california lutheran university in thousand oaks. [applause] >> moderator: okay, here we go. um, we have as dr. kimble had mentioned, we have c-span, we also have kdtv, kclu and ventura county star all live streaming, so the debate starts at 7:15. so let me quickly go through the ground rules. we flipped a coin to determine the order in which there would be opening and closing remarks and who would start and who would finish. in the opening two minutes from each candidate, it would open with assemblywoman brownley, and then that would close with senator strickland, and can that same -- and that same, then it would be reversed in the closing. it would be senator strickland and then assemblywoman brownley.

once we go through the two-minute opening, then a panel, tim hearth and henry durbroff and i will present questions to the candidates, both of whom will answer the same question. a minute and a half, a minute and a half. and then there will be, if needed, a rebuttal no longer than 30 seconds. we'll start and rotate the questions back and forth both from the panel and from the two candidates. let me note that there are bathrooms all the way in the back on the left. please, turn off your cell phones. also this is really all about education. it is not a political rally. we would appreciate it if you could hold applause, comments to the end. also for those who would like to submit some questions, the three

panelists are not all wise. there is a student in the back who has white pieces of paper. she can collect them, bring them and feed them to us. but there are no live questions. um, what else? cell phones off, you know where the bathrooms are, so what more can you want? [laughter] there will be a few people arriving late. we'll try to keep their, that to an absolute minimum. we are delighted that your enthusiasm, your interest in the campaign speaks volumes about the importance of this particular campaign, and we are absolutely delighted and thankful to both the candidates. it is not easy what they are doing. so that having been said, the order in which we will do the

questions will be timm herdt, then henry durbroff of pacific coast business times, then myself, and we'll keep rotating around. remember that it's a minute-and-a-half response, minute-and-a-half response, and then the possibility of a 30-second rebuttal. there will be timers, and maybe i'll go back and get pat, in the front. they will have two with cards for the benefit of the candidates. one will be yellow when you have 30 seconds to go, the other will be red to stop. and i'll try to regulate the stopping. all right? that having been said, according to my watch we're at 7:15, and i hope that that is true, otherwise there may be a missed beat in the c-span. last point, all the information about -- a lot of this is being

taped -- you can look at our web, or excuse me, our chu web page -- clu web page, and we'll put up all the ways if you want to relook at something, we'll put up all the information so you can do that. with that having been done, i turn over to tim merit. timm herdt. >> i believe you want to go to opening statements. >> oh, i'm sorry. the opening statements, and that would start with julia brownley. >> and opening statements are two minutes. >> two minutes. >> correct. great, thank you. i, too, want to thank the sponsors here this evening, cal u and the vent rah county star, and certainly professor gooch and mr. herdt and mr. durbroff and to all of you who have come out this evening and to the webcast listeners and viewers of tonight's debate. my passion for public service began as a pta mom.

that led to 12 years as a school board member and then six years in the california legislature. proudly representing oxnard, naval base in ventura county, oak park and west lake village. i have never stopped fighting for education, and i've worked closely over the last six years with the exceptional educational leadership of ventura county to make sure more resources are going directly to our classrooms while we have had to collectively weather these very difficult economic times. this november ventura county has a choice it hasn't had in decades, to have a different kind of representation in congress that believes in the same values as the people of ventura county. we want to expand the middle class, get our economy back on track, create jobs, we want to

protect medicare and social security, and we want to stand for a woman's right to choose with equal access to health care and, of course, equal pay for equal work. all of us want an unwavering advocate for the middle class, and president obama needs a congress that will help him expand the middle class and move our country forward. i promise you that i will work my hardest to keep moving our county and our country forward. thank you again for this opportunity tonight. strickland: i also would like to thank the cal lutheran university, the pacific coast business times and the ventura county star for offering this lively debate and for allowing everybody to come out here tonight to understand where the candidates stand on specific issues. just the ore day my -- the other

day my neighbor came up to me and said, you know, why are you running for congress, why do you keep running -- why are you running for office, and do you really think one person can make a difference? and my quick answer was, absolutely. but to understand where my passion is, you have to go back to how i was raised. you know, a lot of times people talk about heroes in life, and i think that term is used very loosely. sometimes people talk about movie stars, or they talk about sports athletes. my hero in my life is my father, sergeant first class donald strickland. see, my dad fought in the korea and vietnam war, fought for the very liberties and freedoms we enjoy today. after e got injured in vietnam, he became a drill sergeant at fort ord where i was born. learned many things from my dad, but the biggest lesson i learned from my father is it's up to every generation to leave your city, state and nation in a better spot than what you found. i believe this is the first time in american history where that's in question.

are we going to leave the next generation in a better spot than what we found? my little girl, ruby ruth, who's going to turn 7, and my boy, tiny tony, just turned 5 a couple years ago, i look at their bright faces and their smiles, and i say they deserve to grow up in a ventura county that i grew up in with the same opportunities that i had as a child here in ventura county. they deserve that opportunity, and that means when a student graduates from this great school, they're not buried with a mountain of debt, and when they search for work, they're able to find a job right here in ventura county. you see, i don't care if it's a democratic idea or republican idea, i only care if it's a good idea. and if it's good for ventura county, i'm all in. i'd be honored to have your vote five weeks from today. thank you. [applause] >> moderator: that there are several people taping, they are

press, and they're authorized, and if we find somebody taping, auto-taping, etc., we will ask is them to leave. timm herdt. >> yes. before i ask a question, a short bit of housekeeping. when dr. kimble acknowledged the ventura county star's sponsorship, he mentioned my name. i want to mention the name of my boss, the editor, john moore, who's here tonight. [laughter] so after listening to opening statements, you know, you both sound like reasonable and likable people. but looking through some of your campaign mailers today, i was struck by the same phrase appearing in both of them describing your opponent as being "too extreme for ventura county." so could you expand on that? what is it exactly that makes you believe your opponent is "too extreme"?

brownley: well, thank you for the question. and i think, again, my -- the main differences, i think, between the two candidates running in this race with two very different visions and values, and mine is to grow the economy by strengthening and expanding the middle class, investing in education, protecting seniors, protecting a woman's right to choose. i think when issues around social security and medicare, we have differences around that. i want to protect medicare and social security the way we know it for today's seniors and for tomorrow's seniors. i want to expand the middle class and have the wealthy pay their fair share. so that we can protect medicare and social security. i stand for protecting a woman's right to choose. i think that there is a

difference there. i think my opponent wants to talk about tax cuts for the wealthy to privatize and voucherrize medicare and social security, slashing perhaps education and turning the crock back on women's rights -- the clock back on women's rights. and so i believe those are some of the real differences between the two candidates here running for congress in ventura county. [applause] >> senator strickland? strickland: well, i always find it very interesting for someone who's never lived a day in her life in ventura county growing up. this is a community that i grew up in, um, when i'm knocking door to door, i run into people who i went to school with. i represented this entire district in the california legislature. i know this district. i've been working this district nonstop for a long period of time, and when we talk about representing vent rah county, you know, i think it's important to understand the record instead of the rhetoric.

you know, capitol weekly that follows both of us, every legislative cycle today rate the legislators based on their voting record, their actual voting record. and the capitol weekly named me the second most independent republican senator. and every year my opponent has voted 100% of the time with her party and the party leadership. there's no question that there was a ventura county resident running for congress, and there was three others that did run for congress on the democratic side. but nancy pelosi, the san francisco speaker, encouraged my opponent to move from santa monica into ventura county because she knows that my opponent has had a consistent record voting with party leadership. i think it's very important when we talk about who's going to represent the this community, one, someone has to know the community. i didn't need mapquest to understand how to get here today. i've been here. um, in fact, cal lutheran university when i was a little kid, i used to come here, the dallas cowboys' training camp was here, and i have fond

memories of growing up here. and i think in order to represent a community, you have to know the community. i represent this entire district in the california legislature, and i've been honored to do such, and i'm hoping that i have your trust and your vote to represent this community in washington, because my neighbors' concerns are my concerns. this is a community that my kids are going to grow up in. and i want them to have the same opportunities i had growing up here in ventura county. >> thank you, senator. [applause] brownley: i would just like to say before we go on to the next question and to be perfectly clear, again, as i said in my opening comments, i've been representing oxnard and oak park, west lake village, naval base ventura county here for the last six years. i know that my values match the values of the folks here many ventura county, and that's why the local teachers and firefighters and nurses, sheriffs and seniors are

supporting me and this campaign, because they understand that i understand what everyone here, all of us who live near ventura county, what they care about and what their concerns are. [applause] >> moderator: could we, please, hold the applause. you're just taking up time. the next question would start with, um, tony strickland. >> i want to move from the fields of west ventura county to the nation's capital where we are about ready to face something called the fiscal cliff. and it's likely that in your very first months as the representative from this district, tony or julia, senator strickland, assembly member brownley, you'll have to vote on

a bill that mirrors something called simpson-bowles, a bill that will in some cases raise revenue and in other cases reform entitlements. um, these are not huge overhauls, but they are significant recalibrations in entitlement programs. beginning with you, senator strickland, would you endorse or vote support something along the lines of simpson-bowles to cure the fiscal cliff, something that was practical and solutions-oriented, or how would you vote, and then we'll ask assembly member brownley to comment. strickland: well, the best way to get out of this fiscal crisis right now is making sure we create jobs. and right now what's happening today is our economy is stagnant. we've had the longest, the longest rate of unemployment

over 8% since they've been recording it. so the best way that we can get off the this fiscal mess is by growing the california economy and growing the economy in the united states. one of the things that i'm going to fight for in washington is what's being proposed right now in washington is these deep defense cuts. 18% of our federal budget is in defense, but over 50% of the proposed cuts are on defense. that would have a devastating impact here in ventura county. and not just ventura county, but if we go forward with those cuts, california which already has the third highest unemployment rate in the nation would fall disproportionately on those cuts. that's why i offer a resolution to support naval base ventura county and ore bases in california. one thing that happens in washington and other states that doesn't happen here in this state is when it comes to the state-to-state issue, they can agree to disagree on some partisan issues, but when texas is, for example, being attacked, the delegation comes together.

republicans and democrats need to come together and fight for those military bases here, and i'm proud to say that when we authored the bill, i worked with warren vargas who is from san diego and others to make sure we make a at the same time on a bipartisan basis to protect those bases in california. we won't get out of this crisis until we put in policies that create jobs right here at home, in ventura county, right here in the united states of america. brownley: thank you. so the fiscal cliff is just not an option for our country, and the simpson-bowles proposal is just a proposal at this time. i think the congress still has other options, um, to go down. but i agree with tony, i think we have to, in the has to be a bipartisan effort. and at the end of the day, if we're going to solve the solution, there have got to be issues that remoneys aren't --

republicans aren't happy with and democrats aren't happy with. and that's how you come together to solve problems for our country. but dealing with our budget and our deficit, we need to balance a budget, but we can't do that on the backs of the middle class and seniors. we have to take a balanced approach. the wealthy feed to pay their fair share. we need to close corporate loopholes, end oil subsidies, get health care costs under control, and in terms of defense spending, um, we have to look at that very, very surgically, very strategically. we cannot compromise our national security. but i will say even generals have recommended where there can be cuts to the defense budget. but we do have to take a balanced approach here, and i think at the end of the day for republicans and democrats to come together to solve a problem, to solve the problems, but not cutting -- not balancing

the budget on the backs of the middle class and protecting our seniors. >> thank you. strickland: if i might respond. >> yes. strickland: you know, my opponent talks about preserving the middle class, and can i came from a lower middle class family here in ventura county. my understanding is my opponent has a record of voting for higher taxes for those tax increases that fall disproportionately on california's hard working families. she's voted to increase the sales tax, the car tax. that falls disproportionately on hard working middle class families. she's gotten rid of the dependent tax credit to balance the budget. the dependent tax credit is something that families rely on here in ventura county. so we have to talk about spending, but we also have to look at, you know, a lot of tag lines, people paying their fair share, the middle class. look, i grew up in the this area, i'm actually lower middle class when i grew up here in ventura county, and i think it's very important to understand

that there's been broad tax increases that -- by my opponent -- that fell disproportionately on those hard working families that she's now telling you she's going the fight for. >> moderator: okay, thank you. new question, and this would start with assemblywoman brownley. following up on economics. with respect to the financial collapse of 2008, where do you think we have made progress to prevent another collapse of a similar magnitude in the future? how vulnerable are we in the foreseeable future to another financial collapse, and what will you propose in the house of representatives to be done to minimize the chans of -- chances of another one occurring? brownley: well, i think this question for me really defines this whole, my candidacy, what -- it is the center of what i believe our differences are in

terms of values and visions for our country. um, i believe that we have back in 2008, as you suggested, we faced the worst economic crisis that we have ever faced since the great depression. um, everybody suffered. but i believe that the actions taken, um, by the, by president obama to have a stimulus program, to create jobs, to hold on to jobs was the right approach to do because i believe the if we're looking today and looking forward, i believe that we're looking forward to strengthening our economy and recovering from our economy. is it fast enough? no. the growth is slow. but i believe that we're on the right path. and i think, again, the wealthy need to pay their fair share, um, here, and we can't balance

the budget on the middle class. the key here is to create growth and create wealth and create the middle class so that people are back employed, and our economy's engines are working again on all cylinders. if you look at the stock market, the stock market has improved. the, our employment numbers have improved slightly, but it's all going in the right direction, and i believe we have to stay the course, and i do believe that we will. we are looking towards a greater economic recovery. >> moderator: thank you. senator strickland? strickland: well, i was opposed to the stimulus plan when it was being proposed in washington. the promise to america was that unemployment rate, if we passed this massive debt back to our kids and grandkids, that we'll get out of this recovery, unemployment rate would never be below 8%.

unemployment rate has never gone below 8%, and now our kids and grandkids are going to have pay for that overspending. what i would have done is come up with private sector solutions to help grow the economy. one of the things that i look at is right now we charge a 35% penalty to american corporations like amgen and others that are investing overseas, and if they want to bring that money back here and create good jobs in ventura county or good american jobs, they would have to pay a 35% penalty. well, i would cut that, and right now we have a trillion dollars that's now being -- instead of bringing it back home, they're reinvesting in china and europe. we need to bring that trillion dollars and tell those american corporations to bring those monies here and put the jobs here in ventura county and here in the united states of america. if you want unemployment rates to go below 8% and you want that trillion dollars instead of being reinvested overseas and being paid right here at home,

that's how you grow this economy. you grow this economy by making sure you have private sector solutions that will help grow this economy. >> moderator: thank you. brownley: well, again, i would just say the choice here is whether we're going to grow and expand the middle class. i think the failed practices of, from the bush era of trickle-down economics hasn't worked for us, and i think it is about expanding the middle class and growing the economy from there. >> moderator: thank you. timm herdt, starting with senator strickland. >> yeah. senator, each of you has expressed concerns about the other's position on medicare. and, again, to quote from your own campaign material, ms. brownley states that mr. strickland has, quote, publicly supported plans that would slash medicare by billions of dollars, costing seniors up to $1600 a year for the same coverage. mr. strickland says that ms. brownley supports a plan to, quote, cut over $700 billion

from medicare, end quote. so, please, explain why you believe your opponent's position would reduce actual medicare benefits to seniors now and in the future? strickland: well, first and foremost, tim, i'm the only candidate here that signed a medicare protection pledge and a social security protection pledge. i've actually came out against the ryan plan. and then, also, if you look at the nancy pelosi health care plan that was passed, nancy pelosi if her own words on cnbc ease "closing bell" on october 29, 2011, said how are you going to fund this program, and she said, quote: we took half a trillion out of medicare for the affordable care act, the health care bill. and then on top of it, the congressional budget office, nonpartisan legislative analysts, says clearly, quote: this would increasely estimates of $716 billion out of medicare.

and that's quoting the nonpartisan congressional budget office. my opponent has said that she would remain and keep the nancy pelosi health care plan, and just by saying that you automatically admit that $716 billion will be taken out of the medicare proposal that seniors desperately need right now. because it's running out of money, and we need to make sure we preserve and protect medicare for this generation and future generations. >> moderator: julia? brownley: well, i certainly wouldn't have signed the pledge, tony, that you signed because my understanding is that your objection to support privatizing medicare for those just under 50. but let me just say this $716 billion that we're talking about, let me be clear, democrats and republicans in washington both scored a $716 billion savings. the difference is, is that

democrats reinvested that money to close the doughnut hole for prescription drugs for seniors, to increase funding for preventive and wellness care for seniors without a co-pay, and by the way, it extends the life of medicare by eight years to 2024. this is part of the solution of extending medicare, improving upon medicare. at the same time we're going to have, and we do have the affordable care act which, again, some of this money goes into the affordable care act so that we have all of the great advantages that the affordable care act will offer us; no caps, no pre-existing conditions, our children are on our health care insurance. we know the benefits there. but republicans score ored the $716 billion so that they can give tax rehoover to the well --

relief to the wealthy, and that's where the money goes. democrats are saying the $716 billion goes back to closing the doughnut hole, increasing preventive care and extending the high of medicare for eight years. >> moderator: thank you. strickland: if i might respond. you know, i know my opponent has a tough time believing, because, you know, just because the republicans, some republican in washington proposes it, i have a history of voting different than my party on many issues. i came out crystal clear that i would oppose the ryan plan, i would not -- i signed the medicare protection pledge because we need to preserve and protect medicare. and then, also, um, you know, we absolutely -- i don't support vouchers. i don't know where you read that. i don't support vouchers. i said for citizens that are 40 and 30 we need to maybe work a little extra in terms of the years before retirement, or we need to contribute a little bit more so we can preserve medicare

for the next generation. the greatest generation deserves -- they paid into medicare for a long period of time. if you know my mom, if anybody knows my mom, they would know she would kill me if i touched medicare. [laughter] so there's no way i'm going to do that, and i've come out strong to protect and preserve medicare. >> moderator: thank you. further? brownley: well, i would just ask what the plan is to protect medicare. tony, i read in the ventura county star that you praised paul ryan for coming up with ways to reform medicare, and i know that you're the founder of the california club for growth, and stephen moore was a board member of yours who you called a hero, and he's said that seniors were the most selfish group in america today. so i don't know what your plan is, um, to save, quote, medicare. but what my message is, is i'm going to protect medicare as we

know it for today's seniors and tomorrow's. >> moderator: thank you. henry, and you would start with julia. strickland: twice on that one, by the way. >> okay. assemblywoman brownley, one of the things that's been astonishing to me about ventura county and its business community is the speed with which they've adapted renewable energy, solar, fuel cell, all kinds of really interesting things and actually created some jobs out of those innovations. we have a number of leaders, power one, for example, in power supplies to the solar and wind industries, and yet on january 1 some pretty important subsidies to those industries are expected to expire. there are 100 members of the congress including congresswoman capps, a democrat, and one former white house adviser, a guy named karl rove, who support these subsidies, and yet the

leadership in the house currently won't bring a bill forward. i'd like to hear from you and then senator strickland about the future of green energy and whether you would support extending the subsidies for wind and solar and other forms of alternative energy. brownley: i'm first? >> you're first. brownley: well, i am going to be very sportive of -- supportive of anything that helps to leverage and incentivize new technologies, green technologies, new alternative energy. i mean, this is the direction our country and ventura county must go. this is going to be the backbone of our future and the backbone of our economic greatness. and so i would absolutely be supportive of anything that helps to leverage, um, leverage those alternative kinds of energy. i would take a look, honestly,

at oil subsidies because while the cost of oil and so forth, we've got to take a hard look at, but i want to leverage newer alternative, more sustainable energies and move our dependence off of foreign oil. and i think that's the right, certainly the right direction, um, we should go. >> thank you. strickland: well, i was one of three republicans that voted for landmark legislation in sacramento to support the renewable energy standard right here in california. i've always been fighting in sacramento for renewable energy. i think we need to look at our whole energy plan as a whole. we haven't had an energy plan, and right now we need to take a look. in fact, i've often quoted john f. kennedy when john f. kennedy in early 1960s, he challenged, he challenged the american people that we'll have a man on the moon by the end of the decade. that budget a republican

proposal, that wasn't a democratic proposal, that was an american proposal. we need to do the same thing in terms of energy. right now we're funding both ends of a war, we're sending billions of dollars to countries that don't like us that fund terrorist networks. we knead the -- need to make sure we get all of the above, and that will create jobs here at home. we need to have energy-independent plans that we do whatever we can to provide energy here in the united states. i support renewable energy, but i also support something like the keystone pipeline. it would have created much-needed jobs, but instead we said no to canada. now canada's sending that oil to other countries. instead, we're buying oil from hugo chavez. how does that make sense? we need to make sure that we, one, invest in energy, renewable energy and all forms of energy, put people back to work here and make sure we lower our energy costs. that is the challenge. john f. kennedy mentioned his challenge, that is the challenge of this generation.

we need to be energy independent and stop funding both ends of a war. >> thank you. brownley: again, i just want to say i want to direct resources to insure that we're investing in renewable, sustainable energy sources. i think this is important for ventura county. i think it's important for our country, um, and i think in terms of jobs here in ventura county we have the naval base, we have amgen, biotech, these are good, high-paying jobs. and we need to train our children here in vent ya county for those high-paying jobs here in ventura county. >> moderator: thank you. >> starting with senator strickland, 12 million undocumented immigrants are estimated to live in the united states, and according to this morning's l.a. times, 9% of the population just in ventura county are undocumented immigrants. what is your position on

immigration reform, specifically do you support the dream act either in its federal or california forms, and what is your opinion of president obama's nondeportation measure? transition vic well, first and foremost the dream act, i don't think, would be necessary if we had a sensible immigration policy in this country. the dream act would not be necessary. what we need to do is make sure that we have immigration policy that's just and fair. we need to require, we need to make sure that people who go through years of the bureaucracy that want to come here legally, look, we're a great nation because we're a nation of immigrants. we should solve this problem, and, you know, you're putting your head in the sand if you don't understand that we need to make sure we do whatever we can to make sure there's a path to citizenship. you know, i think it's absurd that our policy right here is we have foreign students who come to our universities for some of the finest institutions that we have in the world are right here. they graduate at the top of

their class, and then we send them back home to their country of origin. we need to fix this problem. right now we need a secure border, no question. but people who want to come here legally, we're a nation of immigrants, and people come here for a better opportunity. and i think we need to make sure we solve this solution, and i want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. >> moderator: yes. assemblywoman brownley? brownley: well, i was a co-author of the california dream act, so i am very, very supportive of and do support obama's approach here to allow children who were brought here by their parents or who serve in the military, that they should be able to receive a college education. this is, this is very, very important for, um, our veterans and for our young people who have come here, um, by no fault of their own. i also believe that it is

critically important for congress and the president in this next term to begin to work on comprehensive immigration reform. it is critically important to do so, and i believe we should create a pathway to citizenship. but i also think that, um, our young people need to learn english, and we need to do our due diligence around background checks. but we need to have a pathway to citizenship that keeps our families together in the process, and it is so many immigrants in our country are the backbone of our economy whether it's here in ventura county in the agricultural arena and in others. so we absolutely need to address this issue, and, um, again, i would have supported obama's approach so far with the dream

act and, certainly, myself co-author ored the california dream act so that our students here in california who have studied hard and made good grades and can be accepted to schools and colleges and great universities, they should have the absolute right to have, um, educational support and resources to continue their education. >> moderator: thank you. strickland: if i might respond. i think everybody should have that right, not just immigrants who are here. every citizen has that right, and every person has that right to have a quality education. we need to solve this problem. there's many issues, you know, that people don't understand that because we haven't solved this problem, there's a ripple effect in terms of problems in our community. one example is domestic violence. there's many women out there who are afraid to call when they're being battered because they're

afraid of deportation. we need to solve this problem. i want to be part of the solution, and we need to stop, we need to stop, you know, polarizing this issue and understand we're a nation of immigrants. we need to secure our borders, there's no question. but everybody deserves that right in terms of a quality education. >> moderator: assemblywoman brownley, do you want to -- no. timm herdt, you will start with assemblywoman brownley. >> sure. as, i think, each of you has mentioned at some point tonight, naval base ventura county is an important engine to the economy. how big of a threat do you consider the possibilities of cutbacks in terms of closure plans in the future, and what is the most effective approach that this community could take to make the case that those operations should be spared? brownley: well, i think we have to be always vigilant about naval base ventura county.

it's a fact that for right now naval base ventura county is not in danger. but we need to look prospectively and always be vigilant about that. i will say that i believe very, very strongly that knave naval base -- naval base ventura county is doing exactly what they need to be doing to secure themselves here. they are modernizing their facilities, they are expanding their commands, and the more ventura -- naval base ventura county becomes critical to our mill care defense, which it continues to do by expanding those commands, there's no way that we could, um, close down naval base ventura county. so i think the folks at the naval base are doing exactly what they should be doing. it is a unique location with the ocean, with protected air space, with mountains at the top where satellites can be.

a -- the physical geography is so unique as well that can bring so many different kinds of commands to naval base vent rah county. but we must always be vigilant about its protection. naval base vent rah cat -- ventura county is a key part of our economic engine here in ventura county. strickland: well, i would respectfully disagree that naval base ventura county is not in danger. the closer has been put aside for three years. we're not doing it next year, but if we move forward with the defense cuts now being promodessed in washington today -- proposed in washington today, again, 18% of our federal budget is in defense, but 50 president of those proposed cuts right now in washington are in defense. and there's no question that'll have a deep impact throughout all bases, but here in naval base ventura county which is our number one employer, that would have a devastating impact, but

also a ripple effect across this community. that's why we need leadership. i moved forward with democrats and republicans on resolutions fighting for those jobs and sending a resolution to washington because i disagree with my opponent. it is in danger. those jobs are in danger. and i'm proud to say the five-year commander of naval base vent rah county say -- ventura county says we need a strong congressman who will fight for the men and women in uniform. he knows that i understand that it is in danger, and we need to fight and come together as a community, but we need to fight for every one of those jobs. and if you don't understand that that's in danger, you're not understanding the deep impacts of what's being proposed in washington today. >> moderator: rebuttal? brownley: i just want to say that i really do understand the issues around naval base ventura county. actually, i come from a military family also. my father was a marine, my brother was a 20-year pilot for the navy, my uncle was in the

army, my other uncle was in the coast guard, and when i was a young girl, i grew up in the virginia beach in the norfolk area where the largest naval base reside, oceana airfield. so i understand what naval base ventura county means to this economy, and if i'm elected to congress, i will do everything within my power to protect it. all i was trying to say is that i think the people and the leadership within naval base ventura county are doing the right thing. >> moderator: okay. next question, henry? >> this is a question from the audience, but it's near and dear to my heart and reflects my view that both of the past administrations have done way too much for big business and not enough for small business. so here's the question. small business -- [inaudible conversations] >> moderator: excuse me, we'll start with senator strickland. >> okay, great. small business is the answer to

our economic stagnation. more than 95% of all, i would say net new jobs, are created by small business. what will you do to encourage individuals to take the jump into entrepreneurship, and how will you honor and reward those risk takers? strickland: well, i think any economy is, what drives an economy is manufacturing and small business. and in sacramento, for example, when we talk about manufacturing, we're one of three states that charges sales tax on manufacturing equipment here in california. and so when people are looking at where they're going to put those manufacturing job, they don't put it right here in california because of our tax policy. by the way, we're the only one on the west coast. so every year i author a bill that we would eliminate that sales tax and be able to be competitive not just with china, but other states around in the unite. that bill gets killed every year in the first committee. however, i agree we need to even

take a half loaf if we can and move the bill forward. so i co-authored a bill with senator alex padilla in california that we offer a sales tax credit for manufacturing in renewable technology right here in california. we passed the will, and now we're -- the bill, and now we're showing that we're getting more manufacturing jobs in that industry. i'm hoping that that shows that we can now transition and do it for every manufacturing job. we need to fight for manufacturing, but also in small bids. right now what's happening is people are having a tough time getting access to credit. we need to make sure that the maul business folks -- small business folks can survive. and right now they're having a really difficult time of making it, and many times they're getting conflicted rules by different agencies. one example, a large grower showed me after he did a tour, he showed me one state agency that said you can't recycle any of your water.

he's a grower. another state agency said he had to recycle all his water. he said, senator, i'm happy to do what you want me to do, but i can't recycle all of it and none of it at the same time. we need to make sure maul businesses have -- small businesses have access to credit. we're having a tough time for those small businesses making it. manufacturing and small businesses, i've been a champion in sacramento, i'll be a champion in washington on those two industries. brownley: well, i would just say, though, that by, you know, cutting taxes for the wealthy continues to drive money into the big corporations. and i agree with the premise of the question, is that we need to really focus on small business. small business is the backbone of our economy without question, and there are a couple of things that i believe we need to do for small business to incentivize small business. some of the things tony mentioned, but one is to get health care costs under control for the small business person.

we need tax credits for start-ups, for small businesses. small businesses need access to capital. these are all important things. our banks right now, banks got bailed out, but yet they're not providing the capital for the small business person. and we've got to release that money and get it into the hands of people who want to innovate and create jobs in our economy. i was talking the other day with a woman named marisa lopez who's a small business owner in oxnard. she got a small business minority loan, and it's now opened up a dead space in oxnard that was boarded up and now has a beautiful art center where all of the artists in oxnard are bringing their artwork, and she has developed this nice, small business which is just great for the community and great for oxnard, and we have to continue to create the incentives for

small business. small business is the backbone of our economy, and we need to do everything possible to make sure that they thrive. strickland: well, when you talk to small business folks, one of the top things on their mind, they talk about the pelosi health care act and how that's not going to help small business. when you talk to them, you're saying the tax structure is strangling them from making it. they're talking about the regulations. they want to follow the law, but they're getting conflicting regulations. and again, access to credit. right now a lot of small businesses have a tough time getting access to yes, sir. but make no mistake, it's not a tax cut for the wealthy. we need manufacturing jobs. those are good-paying jobs, middle class jobs. that is not for the wealthy. that's for small business right here in our community, and i'm going to fight for that just like i did in sacramento. proven browne another conversation i had with a small

businessman, he said, julia, we need to expand the middle class. that's what we need. if we can expand the middle class and make sure that there's money in the pockets of the middle class, um, so a small business person, 98% of the middle class are small business people. they've got a good or service to sell, and if we expand the middle class, they'll have customer to come and buy those goods and fs services. >> moderator: thank you. question for, beginning with assemblywoman brownley. in congress, were you elected, you would not only be representing ventura county, california, but the nation as whole and inevitably, your advice and your vote with regard to foreign policy would be relevant. so here's a question for you. with regard to the israeli

contention that iran is near to making a nuclear weapon and that force must be used to stop nuclear proliferation, what is your view, what would your advice be in congress? brownley: well, we must be vigilant in many preventing iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. nuclear proliferation is just not an option. a nuclear iran would destabilize the middle east and present a serious threat to israel. and so we cannot let that happen. again, we are 30 days from a presidential election, and i don't think we should politicize an issue as serious as this. and certainly i will tell you again as anybody who knows me in

the california legislature knows that i am someone who takes my job seriously, i do my research, i study, i learn the issues before i cast a vote. and when i'm in congress, i are do exactly the same. this is something that we have to approach very, very carefully, but nuclear proliferation is just not an option, and i will also say that israel is one of our strongest allies, and i support them unequivocally, and i have a long tock record think resolutions and other kinds of issues in the california assembly to demonstrate that kind of support. but i will say by drawing a red line, there's a lot of conversations about that in the news, that we should be careful right now about politicizing that. all options need to be on the table, a red line needs to be on the table as well. but at the end of the day, you

know, my last statement would be to say what i said at the begin requesting, and that is we must be ever so vigilant preventing iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. >> moderator: senator strickland? strickland: when i visited israel with my wife back in 2004, they were talking about the threat of a nuclear iran back then. sadly, both administrations, the past two administrations, waited too long in terms of sanctions and doing what we can. let's go crystal clear, um, we need to do whatever means necessary to prevent iran from achievement anding this ability. because unlike the cold war, iran will use it they've said they will use it on israel. i've supported issues in the legislature, i've had a long track record of supporting israel, but this is one of the biggest threats not just to israel, but to the world. we need to do whatever we have

to to prevent this from happening. because if it gets in the hands of iran, there's no we that not only will it threaten israel, that will be right here at home in the united states of america. so i will be steadfast in supporting our commend from us yell and do whatever means necessary to prevent this from happening. strickland: because they're closer every day that goes by. ?rm thank you. tim? >> we have multiple questions

the audience on the same subject area, and i think probably the one that distills it down best is this. would you vote to repeal the defense of marriage act if you were in congress? transition. strickland: the institution of marriage is between a man and a woman. >> so that's a no? vic vic i support marriage between a man and a woman. that's where i stand. brownley: i support the repeal of doma and, actually, carried the resolution in the california assembly to ask congress to do so, and i strongly support the lgbt community and their right um, to marry and the right for same-sex couples to marry.

i think this is really a defining moment in our country and a civil rights issue, and i'm pleased that the obama administration has taken some necessary steps towards, certainly, the repealing of don't ask, don't tell. and his decision to expend federal workers' benefits to same-sex partners. but i support gay marriage 100%, and the fact that a married couple would not be able to actually keep their federal benefits, filing jointly or the spousal support of social security benefits, a gay married couple would not have the right to those federal benefits, um, is all the reason why we must move forward in repealing doma. >> moderator: senator strickland, no comment?

strickland: no. i support marriage between a man and a woman. >> moderator: henry? you're starting with assemblywoman -- >> i want to move on to probably the most important economic issue of our time which is the devastating housing meltdown and the apparent failure even today for the government to find a solution to fannie mae and freddie mac which have cost taxpayers tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars. what would you propose to be done at the national level which would eventually reach ventura county here to help homeowners who are underwater but otherwise meet the requirements to refinance their homes? brownley: i'm first? >> moderator: yes. brownley: this is an important question and one that i hear from folks from all the time. and let me just say in the california legislature this year

we passed a piece of, a landmark piece of legislation, quite frankly, called the homeowners' bill of rights. and the bill did a number of different things, but one -- two things the bill did was say that when one wants to go to a bank to refinance their home, that they would have one point of contact. many times i hear people say, well, i go to the bank, and one department over here they're working on refinancing my house x in another department over here they're foreclosing on our house. and so that we wouldn't have this -- this bill regulated the fact we wouldn't have this sort of dual tracking that banks do, and consumers would have one point of contact. um, the banking community from a federal level, we have got to release more funds to consumers so that they can refinance their homes and stay in their homes. that is just fundamental, and

we've got to keep interest rates low, provide the capital and equity so that consumers can refinance in their home. this is the way we're going to grow our economy and grow out of the mess that we're in. we don't want to kick people out of their homes and board them up, we want them in their homes and be able to hold on to that one asset that they have in their life. um, so i will say i strongly supported the homeowners' bill of rights, and my opponent, um, did not support this kind of simple bill to help your basic consumer. and my understanding is just before that bill, um, was before us in the legislature that my opponent actually received, um, over $50,000 from both bankers and insurance companies and a week later decided to vote against this important bill in california. strickland: well, my opponent

actually voted to take $400 million out of the mortgage setment fund to pay for other things in the state budget. that money was griffin to distressed homeowners that were intended to help them here in ventura county. so she took the money out of a fund that was supposed to help people to balance the budget for other spending programs. now, what we also need to do is what i'm very active with, i'm involved in a nonprofit called sure path financial right here in ventura county that helps people right here in the county with their credit issues. i think it's important that americans have access to credit, but also to help them get out of the credit mess that a lot of families are facing right now. it's not only just the unemployment rate that's happening right now that has folks really nervous about this economy. a lot of folks, the biggest investment they have in their lifetime is their home. and just a few years ago their home and their money was worth a

lot more, and a lot of families here in ventura county are upside down that. that $400 million would have been helpful right here in ventura county. brownley: rebuttal. pamela harris was able to secure a $26 billion settlement for people who had been mistreated by the banking community, and she was able to bring back to california $18 billion to california out of that $26 billion settlement for the whole country. she brought back $18 billion. yes, we took $400 million of that money and put it towards the general fund in a place where we had to cut to help and support consumers with, wrestling with issues with the banking community and refinancing their house. you know, it's been difficult in the california state budget to balance budgets because we have people who assign the grover --

who have signed the grover norquist pledge and other kinds of things that does not allow for us to have all the tools in the tool box to be able to take a balanced approach. but $18 billion came to california. we passed an important piece of legislation. the homeowners' bill of rights. and my opponent voted against it. strickland: there's no, you know, yeah, okay, $18 billion. there's no question that people are still hurting. they could have used that400 million more because people are still having a tough time with their credit issues and mortgages today. >> moderator: the question, very short, very sweet and borrowed from massachusetts, and this would start with senator strickland. who is your favorite supreme court justice? [laughter] strickland: wow. [laughter] um, before the health care decision i would have said justice roberts.

[laughter] you know, look, there's three branches of government, and justice roberts was my favorite until that health care decision. you know, i think, you know, probably, probably clarence thomas or justice roberts still. >> moderator: assemblywoman brownley? brownley: well, after watching some of that debate last night i think this is a question that might get some of us in trouble, i don't know. but, you know, i believe that when i look at supreme court justices, i, my red line, so to speak, is certainly women's issues. it's certainly the issues we're talking about, the piddle class and not balancing -- the middle class, but i would say i would probably answer ruth bader

ginsburg, and i say that because i have really watched her career for many, many years. she's, obviously, a protecter, um, of women's rights and women's choice, and i have a close association with cornell university and so does she, and so i've had an opportunity many times to hear her speak, i've had opportunities to have some brief conversations with her. and so i have watched her career, um, very, very closely, um, and i think she has been really a wonderful, thoughtful, fair supreme court justice. strickland: after further reflection, i would say justice alito after further reflection. >> moderator: further reflection? brownley: no further reflection. [laughter] >> moderator: excuse me, tim. ask you're starting with julia. >> you know, one of the things we used to hear, and i don't

want to date myself, but one of the things members of congress used to boast about was their ability to bring home the bacon, and that meant to secure money for their districts for federal programmings. in recent years the practice of earmarking has gotten a very bad name, and the current congress the house of representatives there's a pretty strict policy against it. what is your position on earmarks and how they would affect your ability to attract federal money to ventura county for useful and worthwhile prams? ..

brownley: whether it is a partnership with naval space in ventura county. it is very important to be able to match the needs of ventura county and some of the good things that are happening in ventura county with the resources that are available at the national level. i don't think that congresspeople today our behest on the slush fund and they get a certain amount of dollars to parcel out to their district. it takes a very hard work to follow those resources, to talk to the various bureaucracies and various departments, whether it is a department in particular or

the epa. the finite resources, we need to match them up with the needs of ventura county and what industry and individuals are nonprofit and charities are doing here in ventura county. to match of those resources with those prosperous entities that are providing goods and services to our community and the betterment in which we strive. >> moderator: there is no question that there was an abuse with the earmark system. everybody has heard of that. i think that would be of use -- the reason for the abuse is a lot of these earmarks -- no one knew who put the air market. strickland: supporting funding coming back here, you have to put your name on it. if you are not willing as a

representative to put your name behind these things, you should not do it. i believe that i know this community very well. i believe is a congressman, i would fight for the dollars that come right here in ventura county. but i would have to put my name behind it. the bridge to nowhere and all the abuse that you have heard, many members of congress will put that out there without their name behind it. everyone needs to be held accountable. a lot of decisions in washington and sacramento, california, i think as harry truman said, it should stop abuse. if you believe in a certain program and the money coming towards ventura county, you should put your name behind it. >> moderator: okay. i would like to remind our

contestants -- candidates. [laughter] >> moderator: candidates that were here that higher education is important to the future of ventura county. yet, we have a situation that there are large numbers of students with overwhelming debt. there is talk about cutting back on federal funding for university science research. that could impact us here and down the state at caltech. just to complete this trifecta, community colleges have taken some big hits in the budget cuts in california. yet, in a contradictory way, many people at the national level, including president obama, talk about them as being the backbone of the economy. what is your position on higher education and its funding and

the path forward for students who are in a lot of debt. brownley: higher education is so, so very important. california is the eighth or ninth largest economy in the world because of a superior public education -- and university education. cal lutheran, other private institutions, they share in all of this in california. it is the investment in science and research. it couldn't be more important um, the university of california, the research on renewable energies, other new technologies, i said earlier in the debate this is the backbone of california's economy. at the federal level we must absolutely invest in science and

new research. this spurs new industries and economic growth. there is no question in my mind when you think of education that education creates opportunity and prosperity, but it also creates wealth within us. within the counties and state and country. we have to do everything we can possibly do to make sure that students -- students and the middle class have access to federal funds and scholarships, telegrams, assistance here in california. i supported the middle class scholarship in california to make sure that students -- middle-class students, have the ability to go to college and to thrive in college. to be able to focus on their studies in college. so that they come out with a

ability to succeed and not a huge debt. community college, upper university system, they need the money and they research the ability to create a growing economy. strickland: well, i agree that we have to promote science and math in terms of our university system. public universities right here in california. what is happening right now is that we are raising fees. we are raising the siege on the students. so the board of regents, again, talking about accountability -- they are talking about the budget constraints. we are raising the fees on administration and increasing salaries for administration members. that is why i voted to not confirm the board of regents before the senate.

because it puts us out of touch. we cannot raise the fees on students and at the same time, feel that we are raising salaries. most of these administrators make far more than the government of the united states. when i talk about community colleges and things like good jobs out there -- my dad was a maintenance man. we had a metal shop apprentice program. a lot of times, things are broken and no one is fixing it. we have an offer those kind of programs. we need a working suggested. i went to oxnard college. they had a top-notch shopper program. we need to make sure as leaders in the community, that we put effort into good paying jobs. those jobs he can do with your hands with your local community college systems. here in ventura county we have

one of the best systems. in oxnard, and in ventura, we have great jobs as well. absolutely, we are behind in math and science and we need to invest in our future of math assignments. however, we have done a good job in a public university system right here in california. brownley: i would just conclude, i guess, by saying -- going back to what i have said several times. that is you can't give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires and have the investment that we need to put into our higher education system. at the same time, making it affordable for middle-class students. you know, you can't really have it both ways. i believe, again, that the wealthy have to pay their fair

share. expanding the middle class, and that is providing college opportunities for middle-class students and middle-class families are providing other opportunities so that we can provide our next-generation the same opportunities that this generation has needed. strickland: we can't continue to treat people as a personal atm machine. >> moderator: they questioned beginning with julia brownley. what are you reading these days?

[laughter] brownley: good question, not a whole lot, i have to tell you. other than reading up on important issues that are going on in our country about important issues that we face. i tried to read the ventura county star every day. i have a copy right here. the pink edition from yesterday. the last book i read was the book called a lesson before dying. i don't know if anyone has ever read that book. but i would highly recommend it. >> moderator: thank you. senator strickland? strickland: the best in my life was october 5, 2005. that was the day that my little girl, libby ruth was born.

i am reading a book about the relationship is and how responsible it is in terms of your future. how you treat your wife, and everything else. this is a tremendous book that gives you clues on how to grow your relationship. i did a father daughter date. just me and my daughter. we circled the date on when we were going to go out. and we will do something like get together for, you know, a lunch or something like that. but she looks forward to that day every day up until that point. i show her exactly how she's supposed to be treated. she tells me things on that father daughter date that i would've known any other way. i want my daughter to know how special she is in my heart. i want to grow that relationship. it is a tremendous relationship.

every daughter that has a father needs to look at this book and grow your relationship. she will be seven years old in a couple of weeks. >> moderator: thank you. let's get back to the policy issues. let's talk about taxes for a second. senator julia brownley, you have used the word fair share many times. governor romney rather overtly called attention to the fact that 47% don't pay no income taxes. maybe we can find some numbers and find out what this means.

if you were given a clean slate, what do you believe the highest level of income tax rate ought to be on the wealthiest wage earners? and at what level should income tax liability taken? brownley: i think that everyone has to pay their fair share of taxes. i am not sure exactly what those rates are. where the right balance is. but i know in today's economy, we need to grow our economy and i believe very much so that tax cuts for the wealthy -- extending those tax cuts is not going to help us or assist us in

getting us moving forward. there is no question that we need to study our tax system and evaluated item by item. looking at where the inequities are. closing loopholes. looking at the various deductions. but what i continue to hear what the mitt romney plan and the paul ryan plan, we are going to get tax reductions and i feel like it will be on the back of the middle class. talking about mortgage deductions. it dependent deductions and other kinds of things that middle-class people really depend upon. i will tell you that i am not a tax expert, but if i had the opportunity to go to congress and we will seriously address the tax issues of our country, you best believe that i will

study and be prepared. >> moderator: senator tony strickland, you get a chance to answer as well. 35% now. -- i just wanted to try to follow up with that. just looking for some sense of a number. brownley: i'm not sure what the number is. what i do know that there can be capital gain deductions and other things like that, 10 or 12%, i believe that the wealthy need to pay more of their share. >> moderator: senator tony strickland? strickland: i guess it is all

personal. it was set in the first and only debate in the 1980s, when you lose your job, recovery is when your neighbor loses his job and recession is when you lose yours. i think 35% is too high. people need to keep more of what they earn. i think you need to make sure that when people work hard and earn their living, that things like the death tax, where people work a lifetime, to be able to pass on their work to the next generation, i think that is unbelievable. i think we can have the same person have the tax code with four different cbo's.

my opponent has voted for these tax increases in sacramento. the working-class and middle-class citizens. the sales tax, the child dependent credit. hard-working families are barely making it right now. i believe that people need to keep more of what they earn. [applause] >> moderator: senator julia brownley? brownley: i think a lot of what tony says that simply isn't true. i have served in the california legislature since the great depression. it has been very difficult to balance the california budget. i would prefer to take a more balanced approach when we are cutting billions of dollars out

of education and we are cutting childcare and health care and we talked about higher education earlier. we need to take a more balanced approach. because we, too, need to give our economic stimulus going. we need to grow our economy. but that has not been -- we haven't had that opportunity in the california legislature. we have not been able to take a more balanced approach to this. tony and others have signed the pledge. all of those things can't be on the table, i think that is the wrong way to approach it. i think that we have to be responsible and reasonable about

the revenue side of the u.s. budget or the california budget. but we need a simultaneous dog's budget we have to do that very carefully. as we work appropriately, we need to do that in a bipartisan way. at the end of the day, guess what? democrats and republicans walked away with things that they did not like enough budget because we did our work in california for the american people. strickland: i would like to respond by saying that california has the third highest tax rate in the nation. everyone across the state and particularly in ventura county, they are making those tough

decisions. they are making the cut choices. small businesses are making those decisions. there is no reason why california government, just like every family and small business across the state and across this county can do so. >> moderator: hold your applause. we are almost done. one of the differences between sacramento and washington dc, the house of representatives is there are no term limits. in the congress, we have had people in very powerful committee positions. what committee assignments that you look forward to and how will

you, 20 or 25 years from now, reflect on your career in the house remapped. [laughter] >> moderator: that would start with julia. brownley: in terms of looking ahead and the committee that i would like to be on is education. you know, i have served 12 years on the school board, i sat on the budget committee for school primaries, i was in the legislature, a higher education policy committee. so i think that i would have something to offer in the committee and i have actually talked to a few members of congress who have said this that they are not adept at experience on the education committee in

washington. i think there is a place where i could certainly be beneficial and helpful. no child being left behind is one of them. just in terms of term limits, i think the decision in california to expand the amount of time, it is going to be a positive thing for california. it takes a while to get up and get going. and to have a little bit more time to serve the people of california. at the end of the day, and it is the people and the constituents who should decide if a congressman or assemblywoman should be in office or not.

strickland: in terms of the committee, we have to work hard in the next five weeks to earn a trust of the people of this district. but i have served in sacramento. i was vice chair of the house. i have been on the house, the lead republican on health care issues, we passed a bill about energy. energy and commerce would be one of those subject matters that i would like to tackle. again, i think energy is the challenge of our generation to bring energy independence here at home and create jobs. also, someone i have worked very closely with. it is the chair of the armed services committee. buck mckeon, who is supporting my campaign. it is very helpful to have someone who has a relationship with the chairman to fight for

those ideals. i know when i get across the finish line, i will fight for every one of those people. we need to preserve the national security that our people expect from the federal government. >> moderator: thank you. okay, we are coming to the end. prepare your closing remarks when you are spared my question on syria and afghanistan. we will now conclude, and it will be senator strickland and then closing with assemblywoman julia brownley. strickland: i would like to thank the university and the pacific coast business times and everybody in the audience for offering this opportunity to share what we stand on those

issues. my opponent is likely going to use your closing statement to continue what she is doing an entire in the entire campaign, attack, attack, attack. now she is going to do it to me. but she just doesn't understand. ventura county is a world away from los angeles. things are different here. we care about our neighbors here in ventura county. and they need help, we lend a hand. we carpool our kids to sports and to school, preparing them for the future. a future with a top rate education and i will take those values to congress. this is where i grew up. i will fight for you in ventura county that this is our home and i will be honored to have your vote to be your next representative in congress in washington dc. but i will never forget where i grew up and i will never forget who sent me there. and i will work as hard as i can

to represent the values and create opportunities for my kids, your kids, and her grandkids. thank you. >> moderator: assemblywoman julia brownley? brownley: i want to thank cal lutheran and ventura county star and the pacific coast times for sponsoring tonight's debate. it is certainly an important one. we have heard two very different visions for health in ventura county in our country. i believe that my opponent wants to go backwards by turning the clock back on women's rights and will take away health insurance. i would like to support medicare

and social security. all provided to serve special interests. i have a different vision for how to move our county forward. we have to grow our economy and to bring our poorest communities and ventura county out of poverty. we have to invest in education so that people can compete right here in ventura county for good paying jobs. for today's seniors and tomorrow's seniors by protecting medicare and social security. america has afforded these opportunities, nba, too, should pay their fair share of the economy so that our economy can grow and our middle class can

thrive. if you want to move our country and county forward, and about casting a vote for me on november 6. i promise you'll that i will look very hard to work on your interests behalf. i want to thank you again for this wonderful evening. [applause] >> moderator: thank you. [applause] >> we do have more campaign 2012 coverage coming up on c-span2 come along with our live coverage of our event at the american enterprise institute. ..

get extended features including live and on demand video before and after the debate and twitter reaction. >> i watch c-span because when i want to get the news without a lot of talking and pundits adding there point of view i can get the original script from a person and i can come to my own conclusions. better than having someone tell me what i should think. c-span, c-span2 and c-span3. c-span2 is booktv which i love. c-span3 is the history channel and they have been doing civil

war tv. sometimes i want to visit the for te and see what the house ia those things. >> sandra parker mitchell watches c-span on verizon. c-span created by america's cable companies in 1979 brought to you as a public service by your television provider. earlier this month north carolina lieutenant governor walter dutton debate former republican mayor of charlotte pat mccrory in the state race for governor. governor beverly perdue decided in january not to seek reelection. this debate took place at tv studios courtesy of w. r. a. l t b. this is just under an hour. >> >> moderator: thank you for joining us for the first two north carolina association of broadcasters educational foundation gubernatorial candidates' debate. i am delighted to be your

moderator. first to introduce the two major candidates for governor, walter dutton is democratic candidate for governor. he is a former six term n.c. state senator and is currently north carolina's lieutenant governor. pat mccrory is republican candidate for governor. he served for three terms on charlotte's city council land as mayor of charlotte for seven terms starting in 1995. the rules of the debate, beginning with opening statements for both candidates. following those the candidates will respond to questions asked by three television news anchors from across the state. the debate willon the order of the opening and closing statements and questions was determined prior to the debate and had been agreed to by the candidates. walter dutton will have the

first opening statement. dutton: i want to remember our north carolina national guardsmen who lost their lives in afghanistan and remember their families and thank them for their service and look forward to your questions tonight. this is an important election. we have seen tough times and north carolina is at a crossroads. i love north carolina and i want to help the people that are in the middle class, the working families, senior citizens. i learned from my father, the right public policies, invest in education and create jobs. i will listen to you, talk with you, think with you and work with you to lead us to that better day. i look forward to sharing my vision with you tonight and thank you for watching. >> mr. mccrory. mccrory: on this historic night not only for the state but this nation, my wife in the audience and betting members of my family who live across the state of north carolina, i grew up in

jamestown, north carolina where i learned my values. i moved to solve very where i obtained my north carolina teaching certification and then i moved to charlotte where i became a leader in the private and public sector. right now our state is facing serious challenges. the fifth highest unemployment rate in the nation. people are looking for jobs and trying to hang on. i am running for governor to fix the broken economy and fix our broken government. >> moderator: thank you for the opening statement. asking questions of the candidates are three veteran television news anchors from across the state. in north carolina association of broadcasters, nominated journalists who appear in the debate. tonight's acres were selected by a random drawing. we have dave jordan from w i t in the washington green build new bring television market.

cameron catch from w x i eye in the high point ariane and dave wagner from w c n c in charlotte. the topics and questions for this debate were selected after surveying members of the radio and television digital news association of north carolina. the candidates will have equal time to answer. after those candidates have provided answers the candidate commenting first may provide an additional response up to 30 seconds in length. if any candidate exceed the allotted time i will interrupt and advance our discussion. the journalists are allowed to ask follow-up questions to the candidates if needed. our first question tonight is from dave jordan. >> both of you have been talking about jobs and the economy as a top issue in this race. you set forth specific plans. i wonder if you could give us more detail on what it is you want to do, how you are going to

achieve that and how soon you think jobs can be created. we will begin with mr. mccrory. mccrory: i have listed specific steps i will take as next governor of north carolina if i am honored to be elected. first thing we need is change the culture of government and the attitude to make sure state government treats our small-businesses and all businesses as a customer as opposed to adversary and reviewing all regulations to make sure we do not have regulations on the books that are basically in during the growth of our business and limiting the growth of creating new jobs that are desperately needed in north carolina. the second thing i hope to do is reform our tax system to make it more competitive especially with our neighboring states in south carolina, tennessee and virginia who are beating us in economic development. the third thing is to implement a 25 year plan for infrastructure, to show the

business community and citizens how we plan to invest their hard-earned tax dollars for the next 25 years. so we can show our business community we are serious in complementing their efforts as opposed to getting in the way of their efforts. there are many things we need to do and we need to move fast. >> moderator: mr. dutton. dutton: my plan is detailed. gives tax credit to hire unemployed, has shared work where you can get someone to come off of unemployment that led the war, trial basis for eight weeks of 24 hours, get a partial benefit and we can save tax money for that. there's a plan to create manufacturing in north carolina and dollars for development keeping the best and brightest here but i have not seen his detailed plan. when he talks about that he has a tax benefit for people were $5 million. he would have the biggest corporations paying no tax in

north carolina. he wants to reallocate that and shifted to the middle class, working families, senior citizens on fixed income and i don't think that will create jobs. my plan is detailed and talks about the military, doing military -- building a new economy in north carolina, talks about how we will help our rural areas and rebuild that and keep our new generation of people and young people building jobs and providing leadership. go to walter dutton.org and read the plan and you will like it. >> moderator: your response? mccrory: there's only one person up here who has proposed new taxes and that is the lieutenant governor along with governor perdue. four months ago they were recommending a 15% sales tax increase during the toughest recession most citizens have seen in north carolina. of 15% sales tax increase. that is the recommendation that was made when he was governing.

now they are changing their mind at the time they're running for elective office. >> moderator: followup question. >> in relation to that question do either of you have a timetable in terms of when you think these jobs will be created? short-term timetable or long-term timetable and if you have any idea over the course of your governorship how many jobs you think you can create? dutton: if you look at hiring long-term unemployed, quickly, the trial period would be very successful. other states have put people back to work. the jobs will longer but invest in our talent, entrepreneurship and creativity will drive the future economy. my plan addresses that. mccrory: let me correct the question. politician does not create jobs. what we do is help create an environment in which the government does not deter jobs from growing in north carolina

and that is exactly what the government has done in the past ten years of leadership in the executive branch. we have deterred the creation of new jobs in north carolina. >> moderator: our next question from cameron can. >> how do you feel about providing incentives to attract new business in north carolina or islam existing business to expand. we are not losing companies for continental tyre to south carolina or caterpillar or georgia and choosing those states over north carolina. dalton: i don't know anybody who likes incentives but the report says they are legal. other states are offering them. we are in the incentive game. is like buying a vehicle. you identify general motors car, ford and toyota and ask what is your incentive and they say five years or zero -- 0% financing and this one has nothing. that one is out of the game.

we have to have an incentive package. the key is to make sure our incentives are competitive with other states and the best incentive is our work force and people and the strength of the community college system that does great work force training. in order to keep our jobs here and keep other states from attracting them out and grow jobs in north carolina and attract them we have to have a competitive package. mccrory: the best incentive for new jobs and expansion of jobs in north carolina is for everyone both existing companies and new companies and that is not to have the highest sales tax or corporate tax or income tax in the southeast which we have right now. if we reform our tax system we would have a sustainable model in which to show new industry as opposed to offering what we have done in the last two years, up-front cash incentives versus state of north carolina had not

done in the past and i have not done that as the mayor but we need a long-term economic development plan that does include incentives but they have a way to negotiate that is transparent and clearly understood by public and those people you are negotiating with. we have not had that at this point in time and we are losing battles with neighboring states and states across the nation. north carolina is more competitive when we offer upfront cash to new business to come at the same time we are taxing the existing businesses to pay for those incentives. we are sending a mixed signal to existing businesses that invested in north carolina. that is not sustainable economic development policy. >> moderator: your response. dalton: other states were offering upfront cash incentives. republican governor of virginia asked for $50 million more and said he could recruit in that fashion. he talked about reforming the tax code but talked about

reallocating, redistributing the current tax burden. that is $10 billion to $11 billion. the corporate tax being 0 and a benefit to people working more than $5 million. reallocation means it will be on the working families, the middle class, our senior citizens. that is not right. >> moderator: our next question from dave wagner. >> thank you for talking to us and i follow up the issue of taxes. do you support corporate to personal income taxes and if so, what specific tax or taxes would you consider increasing to make up lost revenue in the state? start with mr. mccrory. mccrory: we do become competitive in the corporate tax and income tax with our neighboring states. south carolina, virginia, tennessee in a whole different world at this point in time but the fact of the matter is we need to do that to be competitive and i think it would reduce the need to give these up-front cash incentives where

you are throwing money and new businesses and again taxing existing businesses which helps pay for those incentives. that is a very mixed and contradictory policy. to be criticized for tax increases my opponent as i said earlier is the one who recommended the 15% sales tax increase which impacts everyone including the middle class. dalton: when he says 15% is less than a penny for sure period of time. as i proposed no new taxes, i have cut $8 million in taxes during my time. i cut the food tax and the sales tax holiday. the one that school moms like so much. if you talk about north carolina tax rates remember that we value low tuition in north carolina and we have supplemented that tuition because we have always believed in opportunity for our people. we have more centralized management in our state. we don't have 100 gots but

central management. community college is centralized. court system is centralized and more effective management but supplemented with state dollars. we give targeted tax incentives to companies of companies coming we will pay higher than average wage. if they invest in brick and mortar to pay taxes on that, if they offer their employees benefits, they are likely to get some type of incentive to create substantial number of jobs, if they are 20 first century job that will last into the future and if you offer any incentives you have to have a call back. if they don't meet those promises we get the money back. >> moderator: your response? mccrory: we have 20th century jobs that still employe people from agriculture which is an extremely important part of the economy and the only talk about 20 first century jobs is inexcusable because the agricultural community is one of

the most important industries in our state. that is the the 20th and twenty-first century industry and manufacturing, i have not given up on manufacturing. one i see furniture co. still staying in business, we need to help them as much as helping new high-tech industry in north carolina. >> moderator: follow up. >> personal taxes. the question is can each of you tell me upset proximate tax rate you pay last year? dalton: i am going to estimate 25% give or take a look. call you have my tax returns. the people have my tax returns. application for a job, i've filled up my application and he hasn't. you haven't seen his. >> i pay what was required by the irs and the irs never questioned my tax returns in 36

years that i was gainfully employed in north carolina and i am proud of the private sector experience that i have and i am not going to have the irs checking personal tax records of city council members and mayors or governors. they need to stay out of our business and so do politicians. >> moderator: we are going to turn to the issue of health care with a question from dave jordan. >> the state will complete its transition to a managed-care model for mental health as the next governor takes office. how will you in sure those in need don't fall for the cracks? we begin with mr. dalton. dalton: health is a tough issue. several years ago we privatized mental health and all the health directors were saying that would be a good thing. it ended up not being the good thing particularly for rural areas. for larry as do not have the providers to the best providers to give that service. as we look at advantage of the

affordable care act, mental health has helped tremendously and i think that will help the health of our people but also help the health of the economy. we will be able to receive $15 billion in the last six years of that. first three years without the last six years with $15 billion. that will help provide services in rural areas which have such a high medicaid population. when we -- i would opt in to that. the first three years is without costs but your dollars coming back from washington d.c. but i want those dollars in north carolina. i don't want to send money there and go somewhere else. you can opt out at any time so it is risk free but the one area that would benefit tremendously is mental health. >> moderator: mr. mccrory. mccrory: when i debated beverly perdue, she said she and her administration would fix the

mental health problem in north carolina. it has not been fixed. it is disasters in north carolina. if you talk to any sheriff for emergency room doctor we have mental health patients basically sitting in our emergency rooms waiting for service and often waiting 24, 48 hours whether in the ordinary is or rural areas, we have not increased service to mental health patients. we have major addiction issues that sheriff and county jails have to deal with and the stage has hase has hte has has that responsibility to county governments which is not being talked about by the executive branch. >> moderator: next question by cameron can't. >> i want to ask about education. you have an ad running with features saying it is your goal to make sure every child in north carolina and read by fourth grade. the immediate overwhelming response i am hearing is you are setting the bar incredibly low. how do you respond to that? mr. dalton, where do you think

the bar should be set in terms of when children should be able to read? mccrory: i thank jamestown, north carolina for participating. i am proud to have her participation. compared to north carolina standards the current success of kids reading after third grade, that is a very high standard and would be a tremendous improvement because right now or a large percentage of our kids are not doing basic reading and writing after third grade and yet almost all of them are being promoted to fourth grade. when you do that, the likelihood of them dropping out of school is extremely high and we have been allowing these social promotions. i have looked at systems by mitch daniels in indiana and jeb bush in florida and seeing we put strict criteria and resources in the first three grades especially third grade and in sure if the child cannot read or write or do basic math,

put all the resources at that grade level to insure that there is no longer social promotion because when that happens we are failing our students and failing north carolina. >> moderator: mr. dalton. dalton: that is why smart start is so important that he supported those 20% cuts to that budget. that was held unconstitutional and of legislature still did not come back. the answer to your question is we need children reading as soon as possible and those early childhood development programs are so -- i don't just say that the federal reserve says that. a most conservative body says we do not normally engage on social issues but we have done research and that research shows the very best dollar you can spend in education is early childhood development. those cuts have hurt that efforts. my education plan which we

announced today replenishes that money and expand their reach filed with education. that is the way you get children to read as early as possible and ultimately how you deal with a better economy. >> your response? mccrory: you cannot defend the common status quo when graduates are not graduating high school and we have 60% of our children who do graduate from our schools need remedial english and math in our community colleges, replicating resources at every level of our education system. not a matter of the needing new money but using resources we have to look at the results and teach more effectively and support our local school systems more effectively. that is what i am going to do. >> moderator: your time is up. our next question, stick with education. >> let's talk about education funding. hotly debated between the

governor and the general assembly. would you cut funding to education? that is one question and what criteria would you use to make schools are adequately funded? dalton: if you look at the education plan i brought out today it replenishes a lot of that money. education has been cut too deeply. he said it is not a matter of new money. union won't improve education by being near the bottom of the list of 4 people spending for our students. it is far too valuable. during the great depression, max garden was governor of north carolina. i represented that area. we were in the great depression. one stays in the united states says we are not going to close our schools. it was north carolina because they believed education is power, knowledge is power. that is what we had to do. that is why we have to invest in education. we need to prioritize and use that money for technology and

customization and treat our teachers as professionals and pay them a professional wage, give them the professional development they need to learn best practice so they can take it back to the classroom and educate our children so we can compete not only against every child in the united states but across the world. i want to make north carolina a leader in the nation and in this global economy and you don't do that by cutting education. digit date our children, we will compete. >> moderator: mr. mccrory. mccrory: in the first two years of the perdue dalton administration he pursued cutting education. was a major part of the budget and cut education was he was budget chairman and in the senate. the rhetoric does not match the facts. what we need to do in the last two years under the perdue and mr. dalton administration the debate was about budgets and not results. that is what we need to talk about. the difference between his

budget and the legislature but it was less than 1%. that is it. no one is talking about results. what we want kids to achieve. i want the kids to learn and get the skills needed to get a job as opposed to moving in with their parents. that is what our education is for. to get critical thinking and teach them a skill and that will help the state get out of a recession but if we accept pouring more money into a broken system then we will have the same failure rate we have had the last ten years under the perdue and possibly dalton administration. time to reform the education system with new thinking and technology and streamlining three areas of education, k-12 community colleges and universities. get them to work as a team, not separate entities. >> moderator: your response? dalton: he talked about the perdue dolphin administration. we were elected separately. i have not had the steering wheel. when he talks about the last ten

years, north carolina has improved its graduation rate. we are making progress with those hats did not help. when you talk about improving education, i did the bill -- the education act that created our early high school. >> moderator: we are going to turn to the energy issue with dave jordan. >> a big issue in eastern carolina is that eastern municipal power agency created by the state decades ago to provide power to 32 municipalities in eastern carolina. it has been in debt since day one and that is passed to the customers which is $2.4 billion. the state committee this year was formed to look at a possible solution but has come up with one. to either of you think there's a solution to this end is it something you would pursue as

governor? mccrory: the cost of electric energy is one of the greatest economic development tools in north carolina that we still have in addition to our right to work status and not having collective bargaining. those are areas we have to work with. there is potential down the road especially with the merger of the two utility companies to also look at ways in which we can look at more efficiencies in those areas of the state where there is higher utility prices than other areas of the state which makes those areas less competitive. i am going to put those together and see if there is a way to deal with this long-term capital costs and operating costs that works as a result of a deal that worked against those consumers in north carolina. dalton: the first thing you do is make sure cities are not taking that money and subsidizing their general funds, told tax rates down so they look good to the people but killing

the people on the municipal service so if you do that you will see the debt come down but the other way is to look at my economic development plan because it has a provision from capital funding for manufacturing. the mayor was talking about manufacturing in the 20th century, i am all for that. my plan has a provision for that and will put people back to work in manufacturing and we need to give an incentive for the manufacturing facilities to come back into our cities and when you get that large load you are going to get more revenue. that is part of the problem. a lot of these have shutdown. a lot of furniture mills have shut down and lost those revenues. if you go to federal trade policies in 2003-2004 we had 17% unemployment. i know the pain of that and those trade policies send jobs overseas and closed manufacturing facilities. if we get those back those

revenues will come in and cities will be more helpful. mccrory: manufacturing is important and utility costs if you talk to any manufacturer in north carolina the regulations against manufacturers is so burdensome they are basically going to i give up, i am going to move across state lines. we have a manufacturer in the audience who has a major plant outside greenville and he says cooperation from the state is absolutely horrendous. other states are offering incentives, we are making it more difficult to work with existing businesses en north carolina. >> moderator: next question from cameron. >> where you stand on the process of injecting water and sand and chemicals into the rock to extract natural gas. where d stand on that? during favor of it how you guarantee it will be done safely?

dalton: i am not for if it cannot be guaranteed but i am open to all energy possibilities and fracking being one i disagreed with the governor when she vetoed that bill. is important to go and start getting some safeguards in place for the possibility of fracking but if you look at all the studies and i presided over the senate when they debated that. a study was quoted at said you can fracking all you want to north carolina the most you get is six days national supply. i was a business major in chapel hill and worked in banking. that tells me the free-market will not come to north carolina and fracking in our state. i'm open to it thicken be done not only safely but another issue that takes a ton of water to do the fracking and you are talking about doing fracking in some rural areas that are oil--oil wells that have experienced severe drought. we need to be very careful that if any fracking is allowed it

does not deplete our water supply as well as damage our water supply. >> moderator: mr. mccrory. mccrory: i can't tell whether they're for or against it based on that comment. i am in favor of it. governor ed rendell recently came to campaign for mr. dalton, a former mayor of philadelphia, former governor of pennsylvania, a democrat says there are saves ways to do it, they are implementing safeway's in pennsylvania and the first person to study, that mr. dalton is referring to, he is quoting the same group that said there wasn't any in pennsylvania either and believe me pennsylvania is drilling, they are exploring for natural gas, it rebuild the economies in blighted rural counties that were suffering like in north carolina. it is time to quit sitting on the sidelines and policies that have been in place by democratic and republican governors across the nation, implement those in north carolina and let the

private sector determine whether there is natural gas underneath our precious ground here. >> moderator: mr. dalton, your response? dalton: spoken like someone who represents big oil and his law firm represents the american petroleum institute. there is no surprise he is making those commentss. i am open to any and all options. it has to be saved. it cannot deeply our water supply. i think i am out of time. >> moderator: follow-up question. >> you mentioned job creation through fracking. the department of commerce estimating at its peak it will create 372 jobs. given some of the unknowns and potential risks is it worth it for that number of jobs? mccrory: the department of commerce has yet to drill anywhere. why don't we find out what the private sector, not government agency determine whether or not we have natural gas resources

underneath the ground? that is what i want to do and if there are we will have saves, environmentally sound policy to implement just like governor ed rendell in pennsylvania, former governor who implemented it. it is working and we need jobs in north carolina. >> moderator: you are out of time. would you like to respond? dalton: i am fine. >> moderator: we will be back in just a minute. we are going to take a short break for public service announcement. and now back with more questions for are candidates. we start with dave. >> question about state government. at a time when families across north carolina are making sacrifices in their budgets can you give me an example of one specific program you would cut or eliminate in state government? i will start with mr. mccrory. mccrory: i will look for duplication. one of the duplications i look for was in education where we

are doing remedial training, remedial education in our k-12, in our community colleges and we have that in the university system where freshmen entering many universities were spending millions of dollars for remedial education. that means there's a broken system and we are spending millions upon millions of limited tax dollars to repeat something we should have done right the first time. this is the inefficiency we must end in state government in not only help our budget but to help our students. dalton: i think if you look at the motor pool and you see articles about that, we can be far more efficient in that. if you look at purchasing and contracting when i was in the senate i have local governments but we need to understand technology and rather than being dependent on everything, fire trucks and they were going out and costing money, i did the bill that said if anybody has been in the last year, you can

negotiate with the low-cost you that at that price or less. it has saves a lot of money. in information technology. we can save a lot of money. i am all for looking at the e efficiencies of government. that is the first thing i would do when i had my cabinet members in. i would say let's talk about how we find efficiencies and put them on paper and i want you to sign the contract, how we are going to make it more efficient and told you to that contract. that is the way we develop the efficiencies in our state government. >> moderator: dave jordan has a question about leadership. >> medical syndicate voters don't have confidence in either party to get things done. if you are elected in the opposition party is in control of the legislature what can you say to voters about your ability to work with the opposition and if you are elected in your party is in control what can you say to voters to convince them this

would not be a rubber stamp administration? dalton: about leadership you lead by example. three times when i was in north carolina senate and walter dalton and governor i took a voluntary cuts in pay to empathize with our state employees because they are suffering, you have to lead by example. at the height of the financial collapse in charlotte, when unemployment was at its highest the mayor took a 19% pay raise. anthony fox was on the counsel when he did not take it. he said that is not leadership. you lead by example. working with the opposition i think the first thing you do is get the leadership in and maybe some other people and don't get across the table, you get around the table and you first talked about can we identify the problems we have and we get some agreement. can we identify our goals? we can get some agreement. how do you solve problems and achieve bowls?

there will be a lot of disagreement but we will find some common threads. when you find one or two common threads and start weeding the fabric used that getting to solutions. i will respect on both sides of the aisle and i think i respected in both houses of the general assembly. i look forward to them or i will be no one's rubber-stamp. mccrory: making those types of comments those not help in bipartisanship. even you know as mayor might pay as mayor in the last year was $39,000 a year for the nineteenth largest city in the united states of america. it is the same pay the current mayor is paying himself. i have a history of working together with both parties. i was the mayor of the city, reelected seven times, seven times this city that had many more democrats than republicans. i am proud of my leader to. i stepped on the toes of the right and left during my 14

years as mayor and that is what a leader has to do. they have to make tough decisions that have a vision and strategy to implement those visions and that is what i did and why i was reelected seven times and i am proud of that leadership where we created an environment to create jobs and i want to create that environment for the entire state and have a state government that is the government of cooperation, not a government of being an adversary to our citizens or small business. dirksen senate office building >> moderator: your response? dalton: i want to get a record straight. he talked about his wins in the last election he lost both charlotte and mecklenburg county and there are reasons for that. for nine straight years when he was mayor charlotte was the highest taxed city in the state and highest taxed city when he left. he took that 19% pay raise when he entered as mayor and when you look at when he left the unemployment tripled and the debt--and spending and taxes

went up. no wonder people did not vote for him. >> moderator: our next question. >> i talked to a lot of voters who said they are fed up with congress and state legislature because they don't think you can get anything done. you are not willing to compromise because of partisan politics. can you each give me an example of somewhere in your years of public life where you have tossed aside partisan politics and actually gotten something done? mccrory: i helped the city become so dynamic that it even attracted the democratic national convention and used as a showcase of a city and one reason is we had a lower property-tax than winston-salem, durrell, greensboro. allow or property tax in rutherford and the way he used statistics for political gain and use charlotte's taxes with county taxes which was controlled by the other party is

extremely misleading. we need to be honest about the budget of north carolina. the next governor of north carolina is going to inherit a budget that is not balanced regardless with south -- balanced budget amendment says. and for unemployment insurance. we have to be honest about tax figures and revenue deficits and quit playing these political games where basic accounting is needed next year. >> joining business, all about bringing people together and ask for republicans and democrats appointed to that and house members, education and business leaders and we past nine pieces of legislation that helped the system which is held as a model by the new york times in prove. i think i have a reputation of

working across the aisle but let me correct one thing. when he talks about county taxes one of the reasons is the news media said there was no greater cheerleader than the mayor and so he gets credit to have that as part of the tax package. as far as the balanced budget when i was in the senate and working on the budget we kept that aaa rating and usa today rated north carolina for the most fiscally responsible state in the nation so thank you. mccrory: thank you for voting and supporting my effort to take to the voters an increase to pay for transportation system and i thank you for supporting that because he did support that also. i took it to the voters. when he was budget chairman increasing tax after tax after

tax and the first thing governor perdue did with walter dalton's approval was increase the corporate tax and income tax and make recommendation of sales tax. this is not leadership. we have to reform state government and do what the private sector had to do in the last four years and do more with less more efficiently and more effectively. >> moderator: of follow-up. >> can i ask again specifically something you have done to bridge that partisan gap to reach across the aisle? a specific instance? mccrory: implementing a mass-transit system in my city was extremely -- i worked closely with governor hunt's. we campaigned together when he was governor. we shared a platform, a republican mayor and democratic governor shared a platform to allow the voters of mecklenburg county to decide whether they wanted to pay for a vision which i presented an thankfully a vision that is working

successfully. >> moderator: next question from dave wagner. >> last week mr. dalton implemented an ad that said mr. mccrory doesn't understand the african-american experience in north carolina. characterizing your opponent's raise appropriate in this campaign and how would sensitive issues of race if you were elected governor? dalton: you have to understand that is the time he was running at tv ad that had someone who had made derogatory and offensive comments after losing a race by 24 points and there were people in the african-american community who were upset. governor romney made his 47% comment and republicans across the nation that spoke against that and some republicans in north carolina withdrew their endorsement of governor romney. he did not. he embraced that and there were people and that ad is not strictly about

african-americans. it is about the working people and our senior citizens. when you kick half the nation to the curve that is not what people are wanting. and i will represent 100% of the people and that is what that is about. senator mansfield speaking showing what he was upset about what was going on in the mayor's campaign. senator mckissy saying he was upset about the attitude he was seeing in that campaign. we need someone to not only bring democrats and republicans together, we need someone that brings everybody to get there. i am not about representing 53% or 47%. i will represent 100%. dirksen senate office building 0 i didn't think it could get lower with the things that governor perdue did. that youtube add that i hope we don't see on tv was not something that would bring

people together. i have a history as a mayor and a human being of mentoring young kids of all races and learning about their experiences. i treat people as individuals, not as groups, as monolithic groups. we were equipped doing that in a nation and a state. leadership will look at individuals and the potential. i talked to one of my mentes two weeks ago who is 34 years old. i started with him when he was 15 and he had come to our house on his bicycle late at night scared in this neighborhood. did i understand his experience? no. i helped him? yes. he taught me as much as i taught him. it is of friendship that will be with me for life and i am proud of that experience and leadership. i did not bring cameras to do this. i did it because it is the right thing to do and to be accused of something in viewtube and is in excusable. >> moderator: your response?

dalton: i am glad demanded that child but it is offensive because he has offended. that ad, you can laugh if you want to, you do not understand how offensive the ad was. you do not understand how offensive the 47% comment is. you never know if you're in the 53% or the 47%. we have to work together in this world. if you don't understand that perhaps it was an innocent mistake but it was a bad mistake. mccrory: i am not sure he is referring to -- >> moderator: we are going to move on to the issue of motor id. next question from dave jordan. >> voter id has been a big issue across the country. if you are in north carolina we don't have a voter id bill. there have been a few but not many cases of voter fraud across the state. do you think with the impact of costing the state millions of dollars to enact this is it worth the price or not worth the

price? mccrory 11 it is worth the price. the legislation has been drawn up in north carolina and governor perdue vetoed the administration with mr. dalton's supported of one of the few veto overrides that did not occur next session. we have to protect the integrity of the voter box. there are millions of dollars coming on the ground in north carolina and the political system, much of it from outside and there are gaps in the system where people don't have to show any form of connecting their individual with their addresses and we have already learned from the current governor that there is abuse of the current political system and breaking of campaign laws which is an excuse to. if we require id to get sudafed, id to get sudafed, to get to the governor's mansion and to get to the democratic national convention when it was held in

charlotte, it is good for the voting box of north carolina. dalton: it is not a constitutional right. it is interesting that he is always talking about less government and less spending. as your question said, we are going to spend millions of dollars on something that is not a problem. it is a solution looking for a problem and what i worry about is the elderly veteran, world war ii veterans, a lot of them don't have any photo id. we don't need a photo id bill. in rural areas and i don't think he understands rural areas at all. we have to drive a long way to exercise that precious right. people in rest homes, veterans who don't have id make the effort to get there, exercise that precious right to shed

their blood and that is wrong, that is wrong and that is wrong. mccrory: i will tell my students that i didn't understand their needs. requiring some sort of identification to prove you live here is the basic protection. there are millions of dollars on the ground in the election system. if you don't look for it which they haven't looked for you will not find it. it has been in philadelphia and other cities throughout the united states to think north carolina is exempt, voter fraud is naive. >> moderator: we are going to focus on transportation and if both of you will receive 1 manhattan thirty-second for your response. the question is from cameron. >> the good roads stay in north

carolina. i'm wondering from those of view, a comprehensive plan for transportation in north carolina particularly to improve the infrastructure of 78,000 miles of highway and can you do it without raising gasoline tax which is one of the highest in the nation. dalton: i chaired the logistics task force. when i talked about the governor known as the good roads governor, his vision was to have a hard surface road, every county seat connected by a hard surface road. i asked myself what is the concept today? it is from backyard to the world. we went around the state, each of the economic development regions in the state because i wanted people to know that we are not going to the raleigh center. we want to listen to you and know what your needs are. the people on the task force, understand that north carolina is different throughout.

we talked about doing comprehensive inland ports and intermodal facilities with distribution and warehousing and good roads and close to 5,000 foot airport and railroad, norfolk southern or csx and ports and a maritime study. if you go to that report you will see what i proposed as a framework for the future of transportation infrastructure. as far as funding we have been a donor state to the federal government. we send more money to washington d.c. for roads that we get back. we need to work on that with our congressional delegation and more public/private partnerships and purchases we have done in some instances but always be a challenge and we will meet the challenge in north carolina and be a leader in commerce. mccrory: infrastructure is something i have a passion for because it is a responsibility for government to provide

necessary infrastructure for commerce to proceed in our state and growing our state and all i can say is as mayor one of the first things i did in 1996 was not only formulaic but implement an infrastructure flan and water sewer plant for 25 years. right now they're in the seventeenth year of that plan. is a long-term thing that you have to show the plan to the people and have the experts tell you how we connect forts and rural areas with their various and connect the airports and the west with piedmont and the east and how we connect with our fellow states in tennessee, virginia and south carolina. i want to present the infrastructure plan, what the state has done is basically say give us the money and trust us where we put our roads but the road system and the dot has been so politicized and the the good old boy good old girl system for the past ten to 50 to 20 years

that we have got to revise it and implement transportation with limited dollars we have based on a structurally sound plan that governor can implement and that is what i plan to do. >> moderator: thank you for your answers and is time for closing statements beginning with mr. mccrory. mccrory: is an honor to be here. north carolina is going through difficult times. we do have the fifth highest unemployment rate in the country. what i want to do is bring my leadership skills, and bring it to a team together to work throughout the state to implement an infrastructure plan to reform our education, reform outdated tax system, to build an education system second to none but we cannot accept the status quo of leadership in north carolina. is going to take an outsider, an outsider to break up the good old boy/google beryl system that has been in control far too long in our state government.

any organization needs a refreshing new voice, a voice of reason, a voice of accomplishment, a voice of leadership. republicans, democrats, independentss. i want to reach out because we all have to work together to make the city and the state and every region of the state competitive and we can do with in north carolina. it is time for carolina come back. they travail want to make this state a leader in the global economy. my wife and dialogue to the state and also we girl. raised family here and we're expecting our first grandchild and i want the very best for that child and every child in north carolina. that means investing in education, not cutting education. that means we don't give our money to private schools. big oil and big banks spend a

lot of money getting someone to fight for them. i will fight for you. i will fight for the middle-class. i will fight for our working families. i will fight for our senior citizens who are on fixed income and working together we will move north carolina forward. i am walter dalton and i'm running for governor and i ask for your vote. >> moderator: that concludes this debate. we like to thank pat mccrory and walter dalton and our news anchors for their participation. this program was brought to you by the north carolina association of broadcasters education will foundation. join us for our second gubernatorial debate on october 16th. thanks to you for watching. >> we have more campaign 2012 coverage coming up on c-span2 with live coverage of an event that the american enterprise institute, education advisers to the obama and romney campaigns we will talk about their

candidate education platforms the gets underway in half an hour at 4:30 eastern on c-span2. we are five hours away from tonight's second presidential debate. this is the scene in the debate all. president obama will arrive for last minute rehearsal time. mitt romney also getting an opportunity to get adjusted to the room. moderator candy crowley has been facing heat from both campaigns over the last couple days for deciding to pursue follow-up questions and flesh out questions posed by the audience. as has been done in past town hall debates this is an apparent violation of that agreement signed by both campaigns but not signed by candy crowley. as we get closer to the debate we posted a question on facebook. what question would you like to ask that the debate? here are your responses. pat o'malley asks mitt romney if he has ever read the constitution he claims to love

so much. colleen beaver would like to ask the president when will you demand a complete audit of the federal reserve. susan pruitt says mr. obama, why did you waste the first two years of your presidency forcing obamacare down the throats of the american people when so many americans were struggling to put food on their table? we are open to your thoughts. post your response at facebook.com/c-span. join us for live coverage of the debate tonight. it starts at 7:00 eastern with our preview program. the town hall debate kicks off with questions from the audience and will last 90 minutes with opening and closing statements. we will go to representatives of both parties to get their take and we will take your phone calls, e-mail's and pleats and c-span radio and c-span.org. at 4:30 live coverage of the discussion on politics and

education but before we get to that one of the most competitive races in the country for senator of north dakota. the candidates met in debate last night and earlier today we spoke with a reporter watching the race. >> julie is going to join us to look at the senate race in north dakota. a very tight senate race between republican rick burke and democrat heidi highcamp. this is a speech where president obama is certain to lose by double digits. >> obama is expected to lose by double digits in north dakota. people basically agree is one candidate that could have made this a race for democrats. republicans are expected to win the seat in the beginning and would have been republican pickup. he has crafted this independent

persona, and centrist credentials on the trail and people say to the great campaigner good ads and this race has been a dead heat. .. he's also trying senator

majority leader harry reid, and the vote for the camp is a vote for the democrats to pull the senate majority so the state where mitt romney is going to win people he's tried to emphasize look at the big picture, look at who was in control of the senate and voting for taibbi mabey like her, she seems like a good person, but let's focus on the big picture national issue. >> her job is to sort of localize the race, is that her strategy? >> it is, and also she has certainly distance herself from the national party and president obama on certain issues. one being the keystone pipeline, which obama opposes and which she has repeatedly said that she supports and that she's tried to protect the farmers from over

regulation which is something people worry about with democrats being in power, and cap-and-trade is another area where she said she differs from the democrats, so she focused probably more on where she differs from the national party than where she agrees with them as well. >> she's lying to go out and criticize the obama administration if she has to? >> she definitely has been to the estimate talk about the movement in polls. has this been stuck in a toss up for a long time, is this a race influenced by tonight's debate? >> you know, it could become of the polls have been pretty consistent for a while. for a long time there were not very independent polls in the race. there were a lot of internal space polls which tended to show pretty much a dead heat or maybe up a few points just with a slight edge over rick burd, but recently the mason-dixon poll

showed a completely tight race, and we haven't seen either of the candidates gain an edge. this could be one of the reasons that on election day no one knows it is going to happen until late at night. >> talking about taking the senate, is this a must win for the senate republicans if they have a chance to take in the senate? >> it's hard to say what is a must win but most people would consider that it's a seat they were supposed to win. it would be surprising if they couldn't win given mitt romney's big advantage and it's pretty much as close as republicans have this year. >> we will keep an eye on a. thanks for joining us this morning. >> thanks so much.

took place in fargo. it's just under half an hour. >> welcome to the election 2012 coverage on prairie public. this is the debate for the office of north dakota governor. our guests today are the current governor of north dakota who's the republican nominee for this year and state senator brian taylor, the democratic nominee for governor. thank you both for being here. really appreciate it. we will have a one minute opening statement and one minute closing statement at the start and at the end of the show that's been determined. in between there will be topics by myself for discussion. based on the flip, governor douglas was first on a one minute opening statement. governor? >> thank you very much, and thanks to prairie public broadcasting and aarp for this

great debate opportunity. you know, north dakota of these days is a great place to live. a great place to live to raise a family coming to work, and as we look forward coming and we have a great opportunity for it to become an even greater place to build a wonderful quality-of-life, in order to do that we really need a governor who has i think the experience of the knowledge and understanding of state government to lead us into this period of incredible growth in the future. all of that is going to require someone who understands the challenges that are going to meet. we do have great challenges and we are meeting these challenges and we are facing the challenge every day of the week. providing housing, providing flight control, providing water and sewer and law enforcement. all of these things we can do at the same time because of our

great resources. we will be able to lower taxes in the future. property taxes and income taxes. >> moderator: that's one minute. one minute opening statement, senator taylor. taylor: thanks prairie public television and aarp and jack, glad you could make it. i mean for generation cattle rancher the first elected to the state senate ten years ago and was elected to the senate minority leader in the last session. nine years ago i am the yen for mackenzie county woman and together mckee and i have been blessed with three children. i'm running for governor because our state is at a crossroads. we have tremendous opportunities given to us by our god-given resources and we all sensed that north dakota is changing but we don't want everything to change. we don't want our quality-of-life change for the worst in our sense of safety and sense of community. it will take energetic visionary leadership to get us through the special tie with our values and intact that's how we look at the

issues and that is why i'm looking forward to the debate issues today. >> moderator: let's get right to the issues. new estimates for the surplus at 1.6 billion approximately. states would do lots of things for problems like this. there are benefits like this i should say. how would you manage the surplus if elected in terms of what to spend, what not to spend and how do you differ on how you would manage this issue? senator taylor, you start first. taylor: the surplus is great and it's not what defines us that there is a lot of money to work with. there are needs out there. the state is growing and as the governor did. they're leaving less money so

they can start to prevent problems for the rate crisis to develop and then have to try to rebuild infrastructure after it's been destroyed and we need to have a good portion of the surplus invested in the next generation because it's the education of the children that creates the work force and predates the mind that will take us to the next economy after. >> moderator: governor dalrymple, response? dalrymple: first of all for the cash reserves that we are generating over the current biannual $136 billion as you mentioned, the best use of that money is to invest in our infrastructure in north dakota. that money is going to go into roads, highways, housing, flood water supplies, things that with the long term valuable investments for the future of north dakota. as we look ahead into the 2013 and 15 by annual and we would see that we also have a surplus of funds during that part of we

have to get an additional one time investment for that money and look carefully at what we can do on an ongoing basis. senator tayler, you mentioned that i've called for a new spending increase. i believe that has been misleading people. you are a state legislature and you know that when you ask for the accountants to show you what a budget would look like if it was held even, that is not the same thing saying that i want new spending increases. the way the budget process works, agencies and ask for any budget increase that they want. and the governor then considers what that will be. we give the agency directors an opportunity to recommend what will happen in the future to their spending needs and we will respond to them. >> moderator: senator tayler? taylor: on that topic i'm not sure that jackets at that but he calls for the increased budget and it's not realistic certainly

within the budgeting process you can ask for the funding request but i've been in the senate for ten years and i know that if you tell some of these folks that things are optional, they are going to believe you and the increases that we need and growth that we have in north dakota takes real resources and i would ask the give me a realistic budget if it has an increase in calls for more people with it realizes the work force they are trying to attract years ago if the material that they are asking for has to double what they did years ago in the construction test lets keep it real and let's make sure that we keep the morale up within our departments and the people that are working for the state of north dakota. >> moderator: governor dalrymple? dalrymple: you never a member of the appropriations committee. so you didn't deal with budgets directly, but even you should know that throughout the entire history of north dakota budgeting we had provided the opportunity for all agencies to

request spending increases. that's the way the process works. virtually every time we go through a budget cycle we ask people to show us what what the budget look white if there were no additional funds available. this is an important budgeting exercise. understanding with the needs are versus where we've been, and strictly something for the accountants to show the leadership. obviously we will see increases because we have an increasing economy and growing economy, and we will have greater needs as we go forward. >> moderator: let's move to the industry, gentlemen. the poll in the geography department found that nearly 60% of the longtime residents that live in the country that were surveyed say that their style of life is worse now than before. longtime residents. how do each of you if elected plan to man the industry at the speed that is processing coupled

with infrastructure needs for communities like the people that resurveyed and how do you differ on this matter, governor, you start first this time. >> i think it's very important that the state respond promptly and aggressively to the increasing needs the people have in western north dakota and we have been doing that. as soon as i took office of governor, we've increased the amount of resources from the state going to west and north dakota. currently $1.2 billion for roads, highways, infrastructure, more law enforcement and more emergency services. this is the way the steve can help these areas move forward. in addition to that, we have also provided more money for the county and town shiploads and we've had a special energy impact from the that allows money to go directly to the most needy places.

this response is taking place right now and going forward and proposing an even greater commitment to infrastructure statewide not just the oil country but $2.5 billion to address the infrastructure need statewide. taylor: quality-of-life i hear that when i travel the west. where my wife comes from and many of the people. you know, when we look at the response there's been some big numbers, but they are not big enough. the speed of the deployment of the resources, the fact that the money is coming into this market and then we are we to brag about the money that sits in bismarck doesn't solve the problem. the fact that 11% according to the headwaters economics are seeing in the communities immediately is not enough. we would ask for at least 40% to stay directly so that they can prevent problems, not come hat in hand to bismarck to ask for a grant. 12 months or 18 months later.

that is the difference between jack and i on this issue. i want to get the resource for the local leaders to put them on the ground and start to get in front of some of these issues and not have to come to bismarck after the damage has been done. we have to take care of the communities. >> it's the right thing for us to do. >> moderator: governor dalrymple, response? dalrymple: i've asked for an increase in the counties and the city's share of the oil production tax distribution and i think that as we need a large minimum to each county as well as a higher percentage in the high producing counties, but the fact of the matter is right now we're sending money on every pound basis through the impact fund to the political subdivisions that have extreme needs. some of those grants are dispatched as quickly as 30 days to the town or the township or

county or wherever it may be. it's an excellent way to address the immediate impact and i think as we go forward we will want to keep that feature as well as increased distributions through the oil and gas formula. >> moderator: final response, senator tayler? taylor again, leaving it there in the first place rather than asking them to come to the task back is the best way to get ahead of these issues and when you look at the system, the two year biannual system which i supported in the past with the speed of things right now it's almost an eternity we start to implement these very remedies much quicker than we have been. i think it's time for us to exercise that right and that responsibility because it's moving extremely quickly. very often in this case it's been too little and too late.

>> moderator: next comes from aarp of north dakota for both of you will use to put the expansion of medicaid within north dakota that is available under the affordable care act also now known by both sides as obamacare. senator taylor, you will go first on this issue. taylor i haven't supported that, and if we look at the goal of the affordable care act, and north dakota we still have a significant number of the uninsured people. still need health care, still need to be able to see doctor. we have the ability for the medicaid program to cover more of those uninsured people. the federal government will be helping in that effort. and i certainly believe that we ought to do just that. get people the care that they need. get them to a provider that we've agreed providers in the state and wonderful hospitals and doctors and nurses. this is a matter of helping them get the care that they need. oftentimes preventive care which

will save us money in the long run. >> moderator: governor dalrymple for a response. dalrymple: we need a tremendous commitment to medicare as we have in the past, and i believe that we should continue to do that. it is a very important program especially for our state where we have a high proportion of senior citizens. medicaid expansion is definitely something that we should agree to if it comes forward on the terms of the federal government proposed which is they will pay 100% of the cost of the medicaid expansion. but as you know, there are questions right now whether that is even possible when the federal government has not identified any funding anywhere in any budget that would cover the cost of that. and this is some of the black of credibility we have right now with our federal government proposing programs like obamacare that show no sign whatsoever of being funded.

in north dakota, however, we have stepped up and we've done everything that we need to do for medicare. in this coming because of the cutbacks and what the federal government will do for medicated the state of north dakota is looking at a leading to spend an additional $150 million in general funds for medicaid. that is a commitment that we will make and i've told people that and i believe that is why i have been endorsed by the long-term care association who understands the importance of medicaid to their people. >> moderator: response from senator tayler. taylor: we need to take care of our own and the policies of the fourth and this would be no different than policies put forth with this property tax north dakota can and should take care of its own. this is one way that we can do that and in a partnership with the federal government. knowing exactly how important those dollars are, and i understand as well or better than most of the important thing or to our elderly residents in

the state who've made their life and their career who are in long-term care where a lot of these dollars and up. i think the people of north dakota can always count on me to make sure that i not only to understand but i will fight for them every day to get the care they need and i won't let the political wrangling get in the way of what has been politically acceptable to do. when it comes to an issue like this that is wrapped up in the affordable care act. >> moderator: final response and then i will move on. governor dalrymple? dalrymple: medicaid is incredibly important to the programs for not dakota because of the demographics that we have and north dakota supported 100% in the past and we will be there 100% in the future. >> moderator: if elected what are your top priorities for the legislative session and how would you differ with your opponent on some of these? governor, you start this one.

dalrymple: it would be a long list and i would try to cut it down to the main ones. as i've already said, for the cash reserves that we have accumulated, the infrastructure investment is key in north dakota. throughout the state, not just western north dakota, we know that the roads can use additional investment. there's been a tremendous amount of economic activity, agriculture a lot of our roads are not well built to take the kind of loads and the kind of traffic that they have today. we need to make those investments for the long term, and i do it in our proposals statewide, $2.5 billion for that purpose. you look into the regular session i believe that we can provide additional tax relief as well. i've already made a proposal that we would reduce property taxes by an additional $400 million that would be done

by taking the average school in north dakota and cutting it in half and having the state provide the remainder of the cost of education for that purpose. i also proposed a reduction in the income taxes for individuals let also proposed an expansion of the host of tax credits to allow like senior citizens to stay in their homes even if the if incomes ranging as high as $50,000, and i don't believe that we should be deducting war taking into consideration the social security income for the homestead tax credit or any savings people have put together before that. >> moderator: i need to get senator tayler to respond. taylor: when we look at the priorities we've been protecting and preserving the quality-of-life that we have in north dakota that is tied to infrastructure and what we do for infrastructure spending in the state of what dakota not only roads and schools but also things like law enforcement where we are not keeping pace in the state of north dakota.

the rate of crime has risen greater than the crime-fighter's we've been putting out. that is our responsibility to make sure we get the resources out there. i think you'll find differences when we look at what you're going to do for the future and i talk about education. the first debate as we talked about $25,000 average student loan debt the responses that it was too bad. it's too bad we don't have more plans going forward to make sure that burden is left of families can afford to send children to trade school and college in north dakota because that is the work force the will lead us for. my own in-house nationally recognized expert running mate for lieutenant governor who is president of the state we have plans to reduce the student loan debt by half, not to get a freebie that make sure the of the resources to know they can go to college. our property tax relief plan was laid out in june and we see a catch-up in the campaign once in awhile. our target as a homestead credit

getting the dollars to the north dakota residents again taking care to make sure that we pinpoint the property tax relief dollars to those that have their homes in north dakota we believe in that going forward if and those are some of the priorities need to address the will be about improving our quality-of-life. >> senator tayler brought up the topic of scholarships because, senator, you have tried to spin a comment that i made about scholarships to make it sound like i don't care about students graduating with student debt, and we know that is not the case. the fact of the matter is it would be nice if there were no student at whatsoever when students graduate from college. but that's not the way the system works student loan use is very common. the fact of the matter is i led the way the student financial

aid based on need on the 2009 session over what it was before. we have at this .2 and a half times as many people eligible for the needs based student financial aid that we have in the past. i also brought forward the merit based scholarship which is a brand new concept, $6,000 per student. if you perform well in high school and received the right score on the test. >> senator, final word on this issue and one more issue. taylor: student loan debt is still increasing in north dakota and is at 25,000 of our average. it's a matter of understanding and i'm not spending the words they are just the words that were said and it's just where it was. i want to help, and we have the

ability to help in a much greater fashion than we have right now. to talk about the path is just that, it's about half. we need to do more going forward to make sure that it's still within reach of our students. >> one more issue. a huge issue here in the state might not recover. it appears to be working but as the valley city and other residents worry fargo is seeking a permanent diversion. what are your approaches in the water problems an issue you will each have about one minute. taylor: there have been and 60 miles, so we saw the devastation there. there's still a lot of work to be done. there is still millions of dollars left to do in the recovery. again, the state has the ability to take care of our own. i think the state should have played and can still play a large role in that recovery. we certainly appreciate the help of the federal government the state could have and should have done more, and it's not just about giving a loan to some of

these people that lost a great amount of equity is about stepping in with even more meaningful help that will get them back on their feet. devils lake and the cheyenne river valley would be bringing all these people together because it is a basin issue and has to resolve around state health and federal government not only about retention but also about managing and helping the cities handle greater flows of water. fargo needs and deserves flood relief and we can't continue to throw sand bags but again it is a community wide effort that looks at both retention and protection. >> moderator: one minute response, governor dalrymple and then closing statements. dalrymple: i think one of the great challenges that face to me as the governor when i took office was the unexpected flood evens of 2011 and i've been deeply involved in that ever since they began to occur. we went to more places in north dakota that were under severe

attack from rising water. many people evacuated their homeland was a very difficult situation. we helped people and brought people together that could bring response needed up that time. today we are spending a tremendous amount of money on north dakota responding to the flood and creative flood control projects. the effort has been tremendous and there will need to continue to be more effort going into the future. >> moderator: you need to get to the closing statement. you can pick up on that if you become a governor. senator taylor, one minute closing statement. taylor: this is certainly a critical time in the history of our state. it's one that is full of opportunity. opportunity that we can't take credit for an opportunity given to us by our natural resources. but it also comes with challenges. it comes with challenges to our quality-of-life and with

questions about what we do and where we put the windfall from the one time harvest of the natural resources. if we don't make smart investments today, if we don't lead with the energy and commitment to both our heritage and destiny we risk north dakota becoming like a lot of other places. places many of us have turned down and call ourselves not to crotons. i invite fellows to make the comparison between the two of us in this race and asked as you do the research whose ideas are better, whose vision is stronger and whose passion is greater for this special place we call home? i'm also asking for your vote not only asking for your vote but asking to earn your vote. >> governor, one minute closing statement dalrymple: thanks for organizing the debate. north dakota has been an incredible time in history. there are tremendous opportunities for people to build a wonderful

quality-of-life and as governor, i've learned the people of north dakota are incredibly resilient, resourceful, and very determined to bring about a quality-of-life for their future that will be second to none. i think that in order to achieve that, we need a governor that has the experience, who has the knowledge, who has the understanding of the government matters to make this all come about and i would like to say to everybody in north dakota i believe that working together on can provide this knowledge and this decision making ability and in the future we will succeed. i ask for your vote on november 6. >> thank you. november election de la think you for watching prairie election of 2012.

we are going live now to the american enterprise institute in washington for a debate on education policy at a visors to the romney and obama campaign. here's how the what the format for the date. each of the campaign advisers will make opening statements for two minutes. then rick hess the director of education policy studies at aei will have questions for the men. a similar topics, student loans, the no child left behind a wall and the role for the profit schools and teachers.

>> [inaudible conversations] and all the oil conversations [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> this debate between advisers to the romney and obama campaign is expected to get underway shortly. the gentleman we will be debating will be those standing on the podium expected to get underway in just a couple minutes. wanted to remind you about the debate coverage tonight starting at 7 p.m. eastern a preview of the presidential debate at hostetter university in homestead new york that on long island. the previous starts 7 p.m. eastern time. then at 9 p.m. a debate, town hall stifel debate with can be

curly as the moderator. after that, your reactions with e-mails and phone calls. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] heinrich hess the director of education policy studies to let the american enterprise institute. i am delighted to have all of you with us today for this conversation. education reform in the next whitehouse a conversation with the obama and romney campaigns. we have with us today to of the more prominent surrogates who have advised both president obama and governor romney on issues relating to education that they have been out speaking on behalf of the campaign

helping to formulate strategy and policy the next four years. they are not official and paid employees in the administration or the romney campaign so they are speaking in that capacity as representatives rather than paid employees and if there is occasionally a question clear in that capacity they haven't been privy to specific information i think would make allowances. a couple of things before we get started. please, make sure that you turn off your cell phone or for them to vibrate. second i want to give folks a heads up whichever way that the election turns out on november 8th we are going to host a conference what will the 2012 election results mean for education. i hope he will be able to join us. the way the day is going to proceed is going to be debate style. both mardy and jon are going to make opening remarks and we are then going to open up to a

series of topics. i will pose questions and they will respond and be free to question one another and respond to one another. and we will proceed through the series of issues for the duration. the d date is being live tweeted if you choose to join the conversation please use the hash tag #edudebate. speaking first for the camp is marty west of the school for the kitchen deputy director of the harvard kennedy school program on education policy and governments and an executive editor of education next. mardy kuhl edited the book from school housed courthouse. the judiciary role in the education. he's also published widely in academic journals and media outlets and she joins us today as the chair of romney's que 12 education policy group.

speaking second for the obama camp is jon schnur, the executive chairman of executive chiefs. during the clinton administration he served as president clinton's white house assistant director for education policy, senior policy adviser on education to vice president gore and special assistant to u.s. secretary of education dick riley. in 2007 he co-founded leaders for schools and served as the ceo until last year and worked for the 2008 obama for american presidential campaign and was a senior adviser to president obama's presidential transition team and he joins us today as an adviser to the obama presidential campaign. with that come marty if you would kind to get us started. >> thanks to rick and aei for hosting this event and all of you for being here. this has been a come contentious campaign season so far so it's nice to be talking about an area in much there is actually common

ground between the two candidates and more important and the genuine prospect for the bipartisan collaboration after november 5th. both agree first of all but the nation faces major educational challenges. and at addressing the challenges is the essential both to the long-term economic success and equal educational opportunity. only three out of four freshmen complete high school on time for african-americans and hispanics the number is closer to one in two and the latest data from the act shows two-thirds of students who do graduate are unprepared for college level work. meanwhile post secondary trading is becoming at once more essential and less affordable than ever. both candidates agree the federal government has an important role to play in addressing these the challenges. but the rule is quite distinctive particular governor

romney believes the federal government needs to refocus its energies on those tasks that is best positioned to accomplish which means first of all importing citizens with better information about the student in school performance and about education spending. in other words, it means making sure the states and higher education institutions tell parents and taxpayers the truth. amis expand efforts to promote choice and innovation. especially in the cave replication that both remains scarce and it means taking steps to ensure the existing federal spending on the case resulted how your education and the regulations that come with that spending or to expand access and opportunity for american students not to drive up cost. i've worked with the governor and his team for more than a year and i can tell you that education reform is an issue she knows well and about which he cares deeply. as governor of massachusetts he works with an overwhelmingly democratic what is later to implement reforms that made thus

public schools the best in the country and i am convinced that us president, he will bring the same focus and commitment to our educational challenges. >> thank you come marty. >> it's terrific to be here. thank you and aei and marty come agreed to be with you and this terrific audience in the room and c-span on television. the president -- i have the chance to work with the president over the course of the last many years from early on when he was a u.s. senator. we are going to get into a lot of specific policies this afternoon which is a terrific opportunity. i want to start with the fact that i have seen barack obama demonstrate year after year and month after month before he was running for president the consistent beliefs that are the basis for everything he's been doing and proposing moving forward in education which really makes him such an education president. he is constantly focused on education as a top focus and

priority when people say you can't focus on this you should say education is made hawaii and michelle obama risch she is and can make america what we need to be that if we focus and prioritize that i saw him when he came into office and we were on the verge of a second great depression. people were focused on the stimulus and he said we can't pass the stimulus bill. they have a central focus on education. both investment and reform from early learning to hit start to k-12 to post secondary. he also had a consistent dissatisfaction on education. so those that back the education are comfortable with how we are doing. he knows kids across the country are getting shortchanged because we haven't been well enough and he's been in the state and local leaders to a change of education and he's listened to people on the ground. i've been with him in new orleans where he is listening to students at the core members and what's actually going on here. the belief about education has been translated to the core education policy agenda that i

think has been a very lonely important, but in some ways sort of unique in recent days and education. he shifted the role in many ways to focus more on incentivizing and supporting and catalyzing the averts below the state level. he doubled down on investment getting to 10 million students served by the pell grants averting layoffs in the stimulus and he's driven the reform a significant we of the same time. looking to fund things that are working, demonstrating results and instead of a one-size-fits-all approach he's instead given incentives for the states and communities to do even more aggressive reform as they want to drive the transformational change for kids and contrasts are great and we will get into the contest over the coming hour. >> terrific, thanks very much. let's get started. jon, no child left behind is on everybody's mind. what two things that no child left behind get right and what things degette rall?

>> no child left behind did some things right. no child left behind helped shine a spotlight on achievement gaps across the country for low-income kids of color and brought the nation's get the seats and community attention to those gaps in a way that hasn't been done at a national scale before it was building on a lot of reforms across the country built on the clinton work but that was important. it made education a national priority. before no charnel left behind the was the date when education is a state and local responsibility should be a national party. i believe it helps settle the fact education is a national. even though it is a local responsibility to be on the upper hand there was major flaws and drawbacks rustling with today. the most significant flom no child left behind is that it asks for tight means as the secretary of education talks about, a lot of prescription on the specifics of accountability systems and lots of details and

at least on the end. basically that states that are going to be held accountable for how well they are doing in the schools were the bar and set standards for the achievement that really are extremely low in part in that and kids in the country and communities across the country have been lied to the day are being told they are proficient on some of the standardized tests but they are not really prepared for the college ready careers and that is a big mistake the president has been working to address and it is a huge missing focus on incentivizing and supporting leaders who want to make a right changes as opposed to mandating the one-size-fits-all approach. >> two things that got right and to things that got wrong? >> one of the things about right is that it called attention to the issue of student achievement levels providing much better information than we had ever had previously. about achievement gaps and about the level performance in different specific schools and groups within the schools and

that's created greater pressure for reform. i think also i guess the second thing that they did right is that it and how were the local leaders who are willing to embrace it and we'll the gate as a means to drive the efforts as they were attempting to pursue in their district nationwide. it's not prescriptive in particular it was superscript about the steps that need to be taken in terms of intervening in the low performing schools. as a result all that we have seen as a lot of compliance work with the district's checkoff boxes to make sure they are complying with federal requirements but don't engage efforts that hold the promise and improve the performance of schools. second, i think all of it contributed by providing more information, the quality of the information that it provides is

crude. sir jon highlighted the issue of the varying standards across the state which is important and needs to be addressed in some fashion but the other thing is that it focused entirely on the student achievement levels rather than growth and achievement. so as a result, we got that information at the level but much worse information about what schools and individual teachers are doing to contribute to student achievement progress to be shift the focus of accountability efforts recognizing success and getting students from where they start to a higher level. >> both you and jon mead this -- it is as far as the outcomes what would president from the proposed doing in order to get more reliable and transparent information? >> he has proposed shifting away from a no-fly child left behind. you even to the coup either make adequate yearly progress were you don't to a much more detailed system of school report

cards but rates schools assigning them grades a-f. this has been done in florida and increasing the other states and it has served to catalyze in general the attention of the school performance. the other thing is a would focus much more on growth in achievement, what schools are contributing writer than simply the level what which they are achieving so that we can in power citizens to make informed decisions about their child's education. >> as you yourself noted under ncnb have encouraged state leaders to inflate the performance of schools. one of those incentives is when you focus on the level the students are achieving the we that you make your students in particular you focus on the share of the students that are proficient and use that as you're only indicator of success, then there's two ways

to improve the proficiency rates to improve achievement and the other is the we of the definition of proficiency and we have seen definitely too much of the latter so shifting to the focus on growth is one way to deal with some of those incentives and second romney emphasized the importance of not prescribing a simple definition of proficiency or standards across the state making sure that states with low performance according to the national was as much of the educational process are not allowed making sure the states are telling the truth about the school performance against national benchmarks to the estimate a couple of quick follow-ups. growth against the lobar that we've had in the country is not adequate growth and essentially we have kids all across the country that fallout -- fill out the multiple choice test and say you are proficient on that. no alarm bells.

then they go to college and remediation college. they are not actually ready to pass the courses and they are not ready for careers and unfortunately i would have this focus on preparing kids for the mediocre test towards those is not what we need and it's one reason that the president said look, how they do it is up to them that the president has called for every state setting standards that really are rigorous and measure their readiness for success in college and careers what is the common core or certified by universities and employers in that state to have the high standard that every kid in the state and every school in the state can know how to do it against that high standard and i think that is a crucial piece that has been missing. second, i am curious because from what i can tell it seems to be a debate within the platform about nclb. last night another co-chair said

governor romney would reverse the waiver of the president and secretary duncan had given the no child left behind weaver to give more flexibility. i'm not sure in exchange for things like setting the standard. and on the other hand, on the proposal is the elimination of certain core ideas like the idea that there has to be any consequence or activity of the low performing schools. but if there is a way for the flexibility is required to be the local performing schools and have the state's figured out how to do that in many ways but it's a ending the waiver and going back to north -- nclb and the sl requirement seems to be contradictory. estimate that there is a lot to what you just said. you brought up a lot of issues. one of them is to start with the weavers. of course they will be reviewed by a new administration and every executive action in the prior in administration. in fact the waivers would be reviewed by the obama administration granted for two

years. we believe that the waivers are a model for the development of the education in particular a substitute for the comprehensive reauthorization of the elementary secondary education act that would address the problems with no child left behind and its accountability system. the president failed to lead on that issue in the first two years of his administration when his party was in control in both houses of congress with a filibuster proof majority in the senate so where is the focus on education and the first two years this could have been a priority rather than health care >> the focus on education in the first two years for president obama. i met with president barack obama when he was president-elect in early january, 2009. the country was on the verge of losing 4 million jobs. economists declared we were in a recession that began the year

before. there was in a sense a crisis. the president insisted that $100 billion of the stimulus and economic recovery go to education and include -- he wouldn't support the bill without including reforms like the race to the top and investing innovation which has catalyzed democratic republican donors to make some of the biggest changes in the education improvement and it got funding for pell grants and people may disagree or agree that the president believes it is important to avert layoffs of teachers, so i think it is what the president did in the first year of education is seems to me he got more done in the first two years than any president has for a long time. >> two points we want to address. 1i do want to talk about nclb, but jon just brought the question of race for the top and 100 billion invest in the education stimulus and i am curious about where governor romney stands in terms of the stimulus dollars for education. >> to his credit, governor

romney has consistently proved the parts of president obama's efforts in education where he agrees with what we've done and the one thing that he has consistently singled out of the aspects of race to the top and the promotion of the caps and elimination bringing down the data file walls from being linked that was sort of application criteria for the grant process. and he's also praised with the top stimulating activity in the area of the teacher's evaluation and performance based compensation. so i agree there were good things that came out of that, but governor romney has also consistently pointed out raced to the top was a small part of the administration's overall agenda in the case through 12 education and was a small part in the stimulus and accounted for about 4% of total spending in the stimulus. and the rest of that spending went to propping up the status quo which is already

unacceptable. and if anything it prevented state and local elected officials from making the hard decisions that they would need to make about cutting back. education spending had been propped up by the housing group and they -- the obama administration stimulus group put off the budgetary decisions that need to be made. so i think it is a stretch to argue the stimulus did much to drive the reform aside from the relatively small part devoted to that test. stat appreciate governor romney's positive comments in the debate about arne duncan and secretary of education is an issue people on both sides of the ogle have deep convictions about the importance of education. dramatic differences and whether you think the president and the government should play a significant role the thir people that care about the issue and i would say that, marty, when you

call a race to the top a small part of the stimulus i would call it leverage. sometimes there are debates between the programs cutting back funding and i think the race to the top in the $4 billion but the relative percentage is a leverage to drive change and not in the mandate in this case in the eyes of the beholder but $4 billion was leverage and i think the second point is a really significant difference on this view of weather inside the president should have saved hundreds of thousands of jobs in the funding with two different philosophies the president fundamentally believe the time needed to invest in the kids' education for long-term growth that we needed to reform our schools to make sure that we didn't lay off hundreds of thousands of teachers of the times kids need more education than ever you think that is a difference of philosophy. >> so, what you -- as far as

marty's contention for the related expenditures in the stimulus that there was 5 billion between the race to the top and then for the 12 billion about two years later noval was obviously for the top three. do you feel that that is a good reform to the job underwriting ratio or do you -- does the administration wish more of those dollars have gone into the transformation and less to preserving jobs? >> that is a question from the president's perspective. it's been results and impact. how much the dollars go here and there but i think that you care deeply about when people are -- no one is talking of education when the present and insisted that it's a significant focus. he said look we have a crisis in this country. we need to make sure that we have a devastating defeat could don't have devastating cuts to school and get time to recover and catalyze reform, so the outcome he was looking for in terms of catalyzing reform,

expanding access and in fact extending for the economic crisis and those related represent the outcome that he was looking for and they were good for kids and for the american people. >> what is the response to the contention that essentially is a sugar rush from the stimulus dollars that preserve jobs but in doing so would allow the districts and states to put off the hard but necessary decisions. >> i miss a two things about that. one, i would call the layoffs of teachers and kids a sugar rush i would say that's good for kids. i would also say that state revenue since then has in fact stabilized to a significant degree. it's not been easier but an easier time to deal with budget cuts of two years of planning and lower kutz than the massive cuts happening in the midst of the economic catastrophe that the president inhibited so giving people tire making the cuts smaller is a smart way to

help people avoid how the cuts can be necessary but you never want enormous immediate cuts so it's a good strategy and would have been hard to get the reforms done in the country and the school systems to raise higher standards. 46 states now have higher standards. unprecedented in the movement that's happened. i think getting the kind of change in the midst of devastating cuts on and what have been harder to get the reform bill would drive out comes. >> marty come to questions on race to the top. on balance was this a good program and what governor mitt romney c. to expend the race to the top model. a number two, if there was something that race to the top of right and wrong what was it? >> so, governor romney supported trying to use federal funds to incentivize reform so